


Matryoskha

by ellipsometry



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Time Loop, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, some warnings in the author's note!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 45,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27019012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellipsometry/pseuds/ellipsometry
Summary: This is not the first time Felix has greeted this morning – or the third, or even the tenth.  He’s begun to lose track of how many times he’s traced this same path, worn this same groove in the floor.  Keeping track of the days feels fruitless – there’s no clock to run out, no evident limit to the number of times Felix can fail and die and scream and curse.The morning will keep coming no matter what.  Until Dimitri is saved.  Until Felix can get him out of this alive.Or, Felix keeps waking up on the morning of Dimitri's execution.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 21
Kudos: 124
Collections: Dimilix Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> it's done!!!! written for dimilix big bang 2020, and featuring beautiful art by [whimsy](https://twitter.com/whimsyfeels) and [eza](https://twitter.com/eznochi), who also had to bear with me through this whole process and i am very grateful.
> 
> you can find me on twitter at [@ellipsometry_](https://twitter.com/ellipsometry_) and you can [RT this fic here if you'd like!](https://twitter.com/ellipsometry_/status/1316796747885182978) and for anyone who likes listening along, [here is the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5x9Vz2geD8AgL0GGw0YK9I?si=ko8tCFQcSdiYzRo9B97WYg) i put together while writing this! (listen on shuffle, i just added things in no order lol)
> 
> finally, here are some general warnings/notes for this fic:  
> \- there's a lot of death. none of it is permenent.  
> \- canon-typical violence, but there is some minor eye gore in chapter 1, concerning dimitri losing his eye  
> \- i didn't rate this E, but there's a short sex scene in chapter 2  
> \- some suicidial ideation/reckless behavior on felix's part in chapter 2
> 
> take care and reach out if you want exact places for anything so you can avoid. but that's it! please enjoy and thank you for reading :)

As a kid, Felix trains blindfolded.

Something about strengthening the senses, some idea Ingrid had put into his brain, whispered excitedly as they huddled outside the Fhirdiad training grounds, clamoring to get a rare glimpse of the royal guards running drills. Back when they still stood like giants in Felix’s eyes. 

_Did you know, did you know,_ Ingrid hisses, chilly air curling her breath. _If you have no eyesight, your other senses get stronger to compensate? Your hearing, your awareness, that kind of thing?_

 _Your taste?_ Sylvain pipes up. _Like, would food taste extra great?_ He gets promptly swatted away by Ingrid and Felix both.

Still, Felix takes to wrapping an old scarf around his eyes, swinging his wooden sword against the training dummy. And hits and hits and hits until his arms ache, until a well-worn groove appears in its side.

Repetition breeds excellence. That’s what Felix is taught, what he’s always believed.

Maybe he was right to take that lesson to heart. Because now, in the pitched black tunnels of the Fhirdiad catacombs, Felix runs calloused fingers against the dank cobblestone walls and lets his other senses take over. The darkness is almost artificial – but Felix never loses his footing, years of stubborn training guiding his foot falls. He runs a hand up the wall until he finds a small notch left in the stone, a message from Ashe, telling him what route to follow.

It feels like miles before Felix finally catches sight of a small pinprick of yellow light.

“Felix.” Dedue’s voice when he catches sight of Felix is quiet, smaller – a reflection of his harsh treatment over the past weeks, plain as the gaunt lines on his face and the way his torn clothing hangs off his body. He steps into the lamplight, fingers curling around the prison cell bars. “I thought Ashe was coming.”

Felix prickles, pauses. Thoron is already crackling in his palm, and so he sends small blast at the cell lock – it shatters. Certainly, a rougher job than what Ashe would have accomplished. Ashe, who was supposed to be here already, who was supposed to be halfway to the paddocks at the edge of the castle with Dedue in tow.

“Change of plans,” Felix mutters, watching Dedue’s hesitation in real time, the way his eyes dart around searching for a hint of Ashe, a flutter of silver hair that Felix isn’t sure will ever come. If he was taken, disappeared down one of those endless pitch-black tunnels, there’s not much they can do for him now.

Felix tosses the freed Dedue a weapon – one massive hand snatches it out of the air like a lifeline. “Let’s get out of here. Come with me.”

It’s slower, now, helping Dedue through the maze of tunnels to where they know Dimitri is being held. Cobblestone walls give way to packed dirt, then to wood, musty and rotted with time. Felix curses his ancestors and their ancestors for building such an unwieldy labyrinth beneath the city. And now, without Ashe’s markings on the wall guiding him, Felix has to rely on his hazy memory to get them to a new speck of light. A candlelight, flickering –the agreed-upon signal from Mercedes that it’s safe to enter.

Felix rounds the corner first – and lands face-to-face with Cornelia, with a wicked grin slicing across her face.

“Young Lord Fraldarius,” she simpers. Like she’s got all the time in the world. “Paying our disgraced former prince one last visit?”

In reality, there’s no time to think, only to react – and Dedue is the quickest among them. No hesitation; he roars, deafening in Felix’s ear after the eerie still of the catacombs, and in one swift arching movement his axe is lodged firmly in the crook of Cornelia’s shoulder, missing her head as she dodges away. A spray of blood speckles Felix’s vision. It would be an uncharacteristic blessing to have her go down so easy, but instead she just seems surprised, a disgusted sneer swallowing her face as she screeches. A blast of purple lightning hits Dedue’s chest, sending him flying back into the dark maw of the labyrinth. Fire seeps across the floor as Cornelia flails like the wounded animal she is, spitting magic like blood, eyes wild, arms crooked and wrinkled from the force of her own spells. The walls and ceilings shake, dirt falling into Felix’s eyes. He’s still clutching his sword, paralyzed.

Hopeless. So close, and yet so hopeless. And so, as always, Felix searches for Dimitri.

“Felix—”

Like water in a room aflame – literally – a pair of blue eyes meet Felix’s. And isn’t this just like them?

With the flames growing higher, Felix reaches out his hand. And Dimitri reaches back.

+

_You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?_

_No mind. You’re not the first. You won’t be the last._

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Felix wakes up. It’s the morning of the execution of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, former Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Faerghus, now a known traitor. At nightfall, he is to be beheaded before the Goddess and all his former subjects.

Sordid, somber news. And yet, the birds are singing, the capital is bustling with visitors, the sun still shines. Felix still wakes up, same as he always as.

This is not the first time Felix has greeted this morning – or the third, or even the tenth. He’s begun to lose track of how many times he’s traced this same path, worn this same groove in the floor. Keeping track of the days feels fruitless – there’s no clock to run out, no evident limit to the number of times Felix can fail and die and scream and curse.

The morning will keep coming no matter what. Until Dimitri is saved. Until Felix can get him out of this alive.

At first, Felix is grateful. But emotions come in all-encompassing waves: anger, fury, resentment, spite. This was always his lot in life, wasn’t it – the shield of the prince, the Fraldarius to his Blaiddyd. And still—

Still, Felix wakes up, keeps pushing bare-knuckled through the reality of Dimitri’s oncoming death. And if it isn’t death in the catacombs, or in the prison cell, or on the castle grounds as they run away, it’s this: Dimitri’s head rolling at Cornelia’s feet, a crowd of conflicted onlookers cheering and booing. Felix never watches on those days; never wants to learn what that particular brand of lifelessness looks like in those bright blue eyes.

“You’re up early.”

Rodrigue finds Felix in the courtyard. Cornelia had ever-so-kindly offered the noble families and their guests rooms at the castle in the week leading up to the execution. _Such a grave circumstance for your visit_ , she says, mouth pouted. _The least I can do is help you be comfortable._

Rodrigue accepts, comes to plead his case, plead for Dimitri’s innocence. Felix comes with a different approach in mind.

“Lots to do.” Felix bristles as he passes his father. 

If living the same day over and over ad nauseum has taught Felix anything, it’s that his father is far more emotionally volatile than he’d ever known. Some actions are the same, every time, every turn: if Felix wakes up, the birds will be singing; if he visits the kitchen, a maid will offer him tea; if he walks across the bridge in the courtyard, the third plank will groan under his weight. The same routine, polished and unchanged.

But Rodrigue – he becomes a weathervane, a harbinger. His mood differs each time, like he’s constantly balancing on a knife’s edge, waiting to see where the wind will blow him. One day, he lets Felix leave, nothing but a stern look. On another day, he holds Felix back, even going so far as to have guards barricade him in his room. _I’ll prove his innocence,_ he says, pleading. _Felix, I promise I’ll save him._

(But Felix hears the cheers and jeers from the crowded Fhirdiad Square that night as the blade comes down.)

This time, a new reaction. “Felix… please be careful.” Rodrigue squeezes Felix’s shoulder, before stepping back, maintaining that careful, practiced distance. And that’s it. Perhaps this is a good sign.

Out of the courtyard, back through the stables, down a rickety set of stairs, there’s a dry storage room that hasn’t been used for much but illegal dice games and ill-advised servant dalliances. That’s where Felix heads – and, as usual, he’s the last to arrive.

“Nice of you to show up.” Sylvain tosses him a key. In a second, he’ll explain, chest puffed out with pride, that it’s a skeleton key used to access the catacombs, and _really, it’s a harrowing tale of how I managed to snatch it from the old groundskeeper_ , and Felix nods and responds in all the appropriate places.

They had always planned to save Dimitri. Of _course_ they had. The execution itself provides a perfect opportunity for the members of the wayward Blue Lions class to reunite: Sylvain, Ingrid, and Annette’s families accept Cornelia’s invitation to stay at the castle ahead of the sham of a trial and the execution. And getting Mercedes and Ashe into the capital is a simple matter after that. 

_You won’t just fuck off and try to save His Highness on your own, will you?_ Sylvain had asked the night news of Dimitri’s arrest reached them. They were in Gautier territory together, their fathers bickering over troop deployments to Sreng. The arrival of an auspicious messenger puts a swift end to the argument. And Sylvain had gotten this look on his face, a darkening around his eyes, like he was seeing their future and steeling himself. Felix has always been so transparent to him, even after all these years.

_You don’t think I’d let you take all the glory, did you?_

It’s only a cruel twist of fate that Dedue winds up arrested as well, locked away not far from where Dimitri is kept. Fine, then – they’ll save him as well. It was never even a question, and so the plan is born.

Something about it never sits right with Felix. But the past cannot be changed now – only the future.

“Wait,” Felix’s head swivels around the room. “Where’s Ashe?”

“Caught at the castle gate this morning,” Ingrid says, grimacing. “We’ll have to improvise without him…”

Strange. Maybe Rodrigue’s mood isn’t the only thing that changes every time Felix wakes up.

But to say it tears a hole in their plan is an understatement. Each time, each failed attempt – it all means Felix can steadily sharpen their rescue plan, fill in all the pitfalls. But to lose even one member of their party could mean catastrophe.

“This _would_ be a lot easier with Ashe,” Mercedes sighs, her finger tracing the path on the makeshift map they’ve put together of the catacombs, information gleaned from dusty library tomes and street gossip. And supplemented, of course, with Felix’s secretly lived experience. “He would have been able to find a good way through this thing… he was always great at puzzles.”

“Not to mention incapacitating the guards on the way,” Ingrid points out. The room goes quiet as they all nod, maybe realizing for the first time just how fearsome Ashe can be in a pinch.

But if the layout itself is the same as always, then— “I’ll go,” Felix announces, turning the skeleton key over in his palm. “I’ve been,” _walking this same path at least a dozen times now, so I should have it fucking memorized,_ “training.”

“Training,” Ingrid deadpans.

“Shut up. You know stealth training.”

The look Ingrid and the others give him tell Felix that they’re not quite convinced. Felix was never the stealthy one – but if Ashe can make it through with the element of surprise, Felix can surely overpower the guards that roam the catacombs. How many times has Felix taken on half a dozen or more thieves during a class mission? The Professor would always direct him to the middle of the action; Felix is used to it, used to fighting for his life.

How hard could it be?

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Felix wakes up. It’s the morning of the execution of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd.

The solo excursion goes poorly. When Felix wakes, it’s like coming right out of the grave; panting, clutching his heaving chest, hands scrambling against his sternum looking for a fatal wound that’s already closed. He was dying. He _died_. That’s never happened before.

 _Ah_ , Felix thinks, splashing cold water on his face, scrubbing the sleep away a bit too harshly. After all those years promising and pledging that he would never be like his brother, would never throw his life away for the boar – he’s done just that.

Each time so far, it’s been Dimitri’s death triggering the hard reset back to the morning of his execution. But Felix’s death, too, seems to bring everything tumbling down.

In other words, he’s trapped.

Felix makes it down to the kitchen in a haze. One of the cooks offers to make him something, but he defers, swiping a crust of bread instead. Rodrigue isn’t in the courtyard, so Felix sits and waits for him to wake up. Somehow, it seems wrong to start this whole day over again without at least seeing his father off.

He died. He died and the duel chill of knowing that it happened and that he came back unscathed has him near-paralyzed. Should he be grateful? Grateful that it’s not just Dimitri that the Goddess or the universe or some other otherworldly force is looking after – that maybe that same force is looking over him as well?

Felix tries to feel grateful. He’s never been very good at it.

“You’re up early.”

Rodrigue sits next to his son, but Felix is still a bit dazed. “Busy day,” he mumbles through a mouthful of bread.

Today, Rodrigue is amenable, telling Felix only _good luck_ and _be safe_. Felix wants to grip his shoulders, wants to scream in his face that there’s no _safe_ anymore. Every day is death, now. It’s a promise that the end will come to someone, somehow.

Instead, Felix says _okay_. And rushes off to meet his friends.

Ashe is there. They’re all there. The plan is good to proceed as it always has – not hitches, no kink, no problems.

Still – there was one thing Felix noticed, seconds before his life slipped away. And the implication of that one thing, more than anything, chills him: cornered by Cornelia’s guards, bleeding from the chest, stumbling to the ground, Felix had reached out one hand to the wall, something to prop himself up. The effort was futile, but under his rapidly-numbing fingers was the feeling of something familiar.

A notch in the stone, made by Ashe. Not _this_ timeline’s Ashe. But there all the same.

+

Guards had come for Dimitri as soon as he stepped foot in the capital, pushing past the crowds who came to greet him, manhandling him off his steed the second before he was to open his mouth, to proclaim his innocence.

 _Just in time_ , Cornelia had announced, voice grave. _Before he had time to poison you with his lies._

And so, Dimitri is still dressed in his finest suit of armor when they find him, curled up in the corner of his cell. Months of neglect have left both Dimitri and his finery in a state of disrepair: the massive blue cloak covers Dimitri like a safety blanket, but even through the grime and dirt Felix can see the way the silver thread of the embroidery on the back shines. Loog’s emblem, like a flare in the darkness.

Felix wonders if Kyphon ever had to save his dear friend like this – and cuts that thought off as quickly as it comes.

“Dimitri.” The name still tastes unfamiliar in Felix’s mouth from lack of use. “It’s time. We have to go.”

Dimitri turns toward him, and here Felix feels like he’s finally standing on solid ground again. They’ve done this a few times now, Dimitri’s eyes shining like gemstones in the low light, face pinched and tortured, hair falling in his face, stringy and unwashed. _Dedue?_ Is the first thing he’ll ask, and Felix will say, _Dedue is safe, he’s already on his way to the stables. We have horses for you both._

They’ve never quite gotten _that_ far, the point at which Felix can watch his friends ride off toward the dense tree line, safe from Cornelia’s thugs. The point at which it’s all over. The point at which they win.

But this time, Dimitri croaks out, “Felix?” and starts to cry, massive tears that drip off wet eyelashes, and Felix is so shocked by it he can barely move. Not even when Dimitri reaches for him, cradling Felix’s head in those massive hands, stroking a thumb across Felix’s cheekbone, feather-soft. It’s been so long since Felix has seen Dimitri cry – the last time might have been at Glenn’s funeral, just one quiet, tight sob.

“I knew you’d come.”

“Get—” Felix’s breath hitches. “We don’t have time for this, boar, you have to _go!_ ”

“Your Highness,” Sylvain inches into the cell – and suddenly, Felix is acutely aware of how strange it is that _he_ of all people was chosen to enter Dimitri’s cramped cell and get him out. Shouldn’t it really be Mercedes, who can heal him? Or Ingrid, who always has the right words? Had they even chosen Felix for this? Or had he appointed himself as the rescuer, even after so many years of spitting vulgarities at Dimitri, pushing him away, carving out a valley between them.

Dimitri sniffs, nodding sadly as he pulls his hands away, pushing tears off his face with the heel of his hand. Felix’s own fingers twitch, ache to reach toward the other man. He wishes he knew why.

“Thank you all,” Dimitri’s voice is hoarse and heavy with guilt as he ducks out of the cell, to the crowded hallway. “You shouldn’t have had to—”

“We were happy to do it, Your Highness,” Ingrid cuts him off, which is a miracle in and of itself. She _never_ interrupts – but now she shoves a pack of supplies into his hands hurriedly. “But we really have to go. Dedue and Ashe are waiting.”

Back through the catacombs, all of them cramped together, Sylvain leads them by following Ashe’s careful marks in the wall. Felix and Annette take up the rear, eliminating backup guards with quick flashes of magic. It’s going smoothly, _too_ smoothly, too well, so well that Felix really should expect it, should know what’s about to happen when Sylvain stops short, fingers running over an unfamiliar notch in the wall.

“This isn’t—”

Two competing marks in the wall: one made by this Ashe, one made by another. A remnant of another failed attempt. Felix remembers now, three attempts ago, the ambush of explosive materials left there as a trap. But hadn’t they just come this way again the other day, and found nothing but—

“Felix.”

Dimitri turns in time with the first spark, grabbing at Felix’s collar and throwing them both to the ground. Shielding him, protecting him. This is all wrong, this is all backwards.

“Felix,” Dimitri grits out again, in the last space between life and death. “Thank you. For coming for me.”

A flash of red. Before the world goes black again.

+

**8 th of the Blue Sea Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

“Boar.”

“Ah, Felix! I’m sorry I did not see you there.” A flimsy excuse, even by Dimitri’s standards.

Lately, Dimitri has the look of an animal let out of its cage for the first time: skittish, wild, unsure. His hair is growing out, a half-length that’s starting to curl around his ears and tickle the nape of his neck. Felix wants to grab Dimitri by the scalp and cut it all off with a dull knife. He wants to smooth it back off Dimitri’s forehead with his hand. _Disgusting._

“Not going to say hello?” Felix folds his arms across his chest. He’s caught Dimitri in the East Wing of the Fraldarius keep, near the entrance to the stables, where Dimitri’s carriage is surely waiting. There’s really no way Dimitri can excuse this away with an _oh, I was simply on my way to see you!_

But Dimitri isn’t the kind to lie unbidden, anyway. Felix kind of hates him for that. “I didn’t think you wanted to see me.”

“Don’t make assumptions about me,” Felix snaps. It’s a fair assumption, though, evidenced by nearly everything Felix has done and said to Dimitri in the last four years. But Dimitri should really know better by now. “You just didn’t want me to talk you out of your horrible plan.”

The rumors in the capital are swirling that Dimitri is going to turn himself over to Cornelia, an obvious admission of his guilt as an accomplice in King Regent Rufus’ death The truth, unfortunately, is even stupider: Dimitri is going to turn himself over under some impression that he will get a fair trial, that the truth will out, that his innocence will be proven, that he’ll be redeemed.

“No, of course not,” Dimitri shakes his head. “Nothing you say can sway me now. I’ve made up my mind, Felix.”

Rage sparks in Felix’s chest, crawling up his throat until he’s snarling with it. Because this – _this_ is the lie, this is the obfuscation that Dimitri will allow himself, apparently. “Even if I told you to stay?” Felix bites out, hands falling to his side, fists clenching. “Even if I told you I didn’t want you to go?”

Dimitri’s half-smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Well, are you? Asking me to stay?”

A distinction without a difference. And still, Felix can’t bring himself to say the words, to show his hand. Instead, he half-turns away, voice hollow when he says, “Don’t listen to my father.” Felix doesn’t have to wonder what kind of advice Rodrigue gave Dimitri – something equally inane, naïve. “Whatever he told you, whatever—whatever ideas about a fair trial he gave you, it’s all bullshit. You’re walking into a trap.”

Dimitri just hums in response. The bags under his eyes are purple. He probably hasn’t slept in days, maybe weeks.

“He’s a fool,” Felix’s voice breaks. “And so are you.”

“Oh, Felix.” Goddess, he hates when Dimitri says his name like that. Like it’s the first time every time. Like he really would stay if Felix would just admit he wanted him too. If only both of them weren’t so stubborn. “The very last thing I want to do is—is to cause you distress.”

So clinical, so dry. Felix wants to laugh. They used to be best friends; inseparable, like two halves of a whole. Now, Dimitri speaks to him like a stranger. And maybe Felix only has himself to blame.

“Way too fucking late,” Felix mutters, crossing and uncrossing his arms, studying the tile floor with singular focus. Fine, then. It’s not like Dimitri ever listened to him, even back then, even when they were kids. It was always Felix following in his wake, awestruck.

Some things never change.

“Don’t go then,” Felix admits. The distance between them, just a few strides long, feels insurmountable. “If you don’t want to upset me.”

Dimitri’s head shoots up – he’s the awestruck one now, wounded and guilty. “You know I—”

“You have to. Why?” Felix’s voice is edging a bit too close to tears. Dimitri is a fool, Rodrigue is a fool. And Felix is the biggest fool of all, hanging on the words of someone whose mind has already been made up, who has probably already forgotten the dreams they had as children. _I’ll rule, and you’ll be my right hand, alright?_

_I don’t want to do this without you._

“You could come with me.” Dimitri’s offer is hollow in Felix’s ears.

“Useless.” Felix pushes himself off the wall, turning toward the stairwell that leads to his room. All he wants to do is curl up on his bed, sleep for a hundred years, forget Dimitri and his father and Faerghus and all of this.

Dimitri looks up at him through his bangs, grown too long with time. It’s too late, the horses are ready; they’re packed and the sun is long set. This was all for nothing – wasn’t it?

“I have to go, Felix.”

“Fine,” Felix doesn’t bother looking back. If Dimitri has made up his mind, then so has he. “You’re a fool, and you’re going to get yourself killed. So, if you won’t change your mind,” and here is where he sucks in a breath, bracing himself for the wave of embarrassment that roils across his skin, “Then I’ll come save you.”

He doesn’t have to look to know the way Dimitri’s face lights up, to know that he’s beaming. Or maybe he’ll try to play it off, let Felix save face, and hold back his smile, lips pursed. “If it becomes necessary, then,” Dimitri says, voice sparkling. “I will wait for you. And you will have my eternal thanks.”

“I don’t want your thanks, boar.” But Felix never does decide what he _does_ want.

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Over the years, Felix grows adept at ignoring annoying things. Sylvain’s philandering; Ingrid’s incessant proclamations about knighthood; Dimitri’s, well, _everything_ – anything Felix can avoid with a well-timed trip to the training grounds and the feeling of a heavy sword in his hand, he does.

So, at first, Felix ignores the inconsistencies. The way his father’s face changes as the days wear on, like he’s aging across timelines; the small marks stacking up on the catacomb walls; the movements of Cornelia’s masked mages that never seem to line up. Strategy was always for the Professor to figure out. Felix prefers relying on his strength – it’s not the same kind of raw strength that Dimitri and Dedue boast, but something sharper, smarter. Felix walks the line between two extremes and thinks, on a good day, that maybe he can pull this off after all.

It’s easy to get to Dimitri’s cell, now. Mercedes heals their wounds; Ashe’s guidance leads them to the exit.

Something goes wrong.

Sylvain suggests a different route. Felix humors him. There have never been guards stationed there before, after all. But when they arrive, there’s half a dozen knights waiting—

And it all goes wrong.

But the next time, those same guards are gone. Sylvain’s plan works, and Dimitri is just five feet from the stables, where Dedue is already mounted and waiting, when the Pegasus knights guarding the exit descend in a rush of white feathers.

It all goes wrong. 

Dimitri and Dedue make it. Just _once_ , they make it. And Felix realizes he’s never considered the conditions of victory – a rookie’s mistake. Foolish beyond foolish to start a battle without first understanding what it means to win, because as the pair of horses carrying Dimitri and Dedue toward the tree line, Felix still doesn’t feel peace. His stomach still roils with uncertainty, even knowing that Dedue would die first before letting anything happen to Dimitri. _Stay alive, keep him alive, stay alive_. Felix ignores the cheers of his friends, excuses himself to bed where he can hardly sleep, can’t ignore the rabbit-quick beat of his heart—

It would never be so easy. Of course, he has to keep Dimitri alive.

Felix wakes up on that same familiar morning. And again, and again. Even success seems to lead to failure, like they’re all running headlong into an unwritten certainty.

What does it even mean to save him?

If there’s something else at play here, some unwritten rule, Felix can’t name it. It’s something fundamental that he can’t yet wrap his mind around, a certain bit of randomness that ruins all the best laid plans.

“Entropy.”

“Excuse me?”

Sylvain is the last person Felix wants to ask for help. But he’s the only person who would ever believe Felix, who knows him well enough to look into his eyes and see that Felix is telling him the absolute truth. And Sylvain was always the brains in their childhood quarter, ironically enough. Older – not wiser, but more perceptive, mind finely tuned to catch the things that would otherwise go unnoticed, while Felix, Dimitri, and Ingrid stayed enraptured by the big picture.

But it’s _this_ – the insufferable look he gets on his face – that has Felix wanting to curl in on himself. Asking for help has never been his strong suit.

“First of all,” Sylvain drums his fingers on the table. They’ve sent the others away on some flimsy excuse. “I think you’re shitting me.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay, okay,” Sylvain holds his hands up. “I guess I should know better.” But he looks a bit devastated by it, face falling as Felix explains the different timelines, the same morning repeating and repeating. The inconsistencies, the failures, the small errors that grow too large to ignore.

Felix would feel guilty if he didn’t know that Sylvain would forget this all by tomorrow.

“Entropy, then.” Sylvain repeats. “I saw it mentioned in an old book, down in the Abyss library, you know? Our world is,” Sylvain makes a round movement with his arms – the world, Felix supposes. “A bunch of decisions made in a split second by any number of people. They may not even think about it. And every decision impacts the next, but not every decision is _made_.”

Felix feels a headache coming on. “You have three seconds to start making sense.”

“Let’s say,” Sylvain grins, grabbing a dusty pair of dice from a shelf on the wall. “You and I make a bet. If these dice add up to an even number, I win. Odd number, you win.” He tosses the dice – a seven. “See, you win. The act of me throwing the dice impacted the fact that you won.”

“But,” Felix’s brow furrows. “You had no way of controlling that. You could have won just as easily.”

“Exactly.” Sylvain snatches the dice back up, turning them in his palm. “Like I said, some decisions are made, some are forced, and some are just random. Tons of things are like that. Completely out of our control.”

A stroke of good or bad luck; a carriage wheel that happens to run over a dip in the road; a spell of bad weather; his father, prickly and in a bad mood after a nightmare. “Random,” Felix says.

“Entropy,” Sylvain repeats, that little lilt of his head that he knows Felix hates. Insufferable to the end.

It’s not fair to do this to him. Because this conversation has derailed the rescue plan – Felix knows this, knows just how perfectly-choreographed everything has to be in order to succeed. They’ll try, but Felix will wake up tomorrow with a fresh day to try again. And Sylvain – _this_ Sylvain – will likely die, right alongside the rest of them. Die knowing that he was forced to abandon Dimitri and their friends. 

It’s not fair. None of this is fair.

And still, Sylvain stays, helps Felix come up with some contingency plans. Work arounds for any number of scenarios. It’s only when the sun is high and they feel the tell-tale steps of someone coming to look for them that Sylvain looks over, eyes black and sunken. “I won’t remember this, right? Tomorrow, whenever – I won’t remember. Can you promise me that?”

This, at least, Felix can do. “Promise.”

A beat of silence. “You think he knows?”

“Who?”

But Felix knows who, and Sylvain doesn’t bother answering. “Whether he lives or dies, this is all predicated on him. What if he remembers, like you do?”

Ice crawls down Felix’s spine. There’s no way – Dimitri has never said anything, not in all the attempts, in all the times Felix has found him, huddled and shaking in his cell. But, then again, he’s never said much of anything, has he? Half-mad from Cornelia’s torture and the ghosts that haunt him – would Dimitri even have the wherewithal to tell Felix he remembered? Would he think it just another deserved nightmare? Would it hurt anew, every time?

He’s remembering, now, the feeling of Dimitri’s hands on his face, calloused fingers against soft skin. A promise made in the cold, empty hallway of the Fraldarius Estate. 

_I knew you’d come._

Felix bites down on the inside of his finger, avoiding Sylvain’s eyes. “I hope not.”

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

It’s a disaster.

“Felix, _now!_ ” Ingrid is screaming at him, blood splattering from her mouth, her lip ruptured and bleeding, staining her teeth pink. “Get him out of here!”

A flash of red to his left – Annette is yelling something, but it’s impossible to hear over the din of the fighting; the class of lances to Felix’s right; the roar of soldiers breaking through the ranks of mages. That’s Sylvain’s handiwork, Felix knows, but he still can’t believe it, seeing the kingdom soldiers defect and fight alongside a group of young nobles.

Dedue’s hand is tight around his bicep suddenly, yanking Felix to the side, just out of range of a fire arrow that goes whizzing past. Felix has never felt so unmoored on a battlefield before.

“What are you doing?” And he’s never heard Dedue quite so angry before, yelling at Felix through gritted teeth. His usual steely resolve is cracking under the pressure of his own wound, a nasty gash in his side that Mercedes is hurriedly waving her palms over. She’s drenched in sweat, and looks seconds from passing out, no more so than when Dedue turns and says, firm and harsh, “I told you not to bother with me.”

“I’m—” Felix’s chokes on the dirt floating in the air, and Mercedes wearily beckons the two of them to a makeshift shelter where Dimitri is curled up, clutching the wound on his shoulder, thick red dripping between the gaps in his fingers. _What next, what do they do next_ —

“Stop being reckless,” Dedue’s hand curls in Felix’s cloak, jerking him toward Dimitri. “You have to see His Highness to safety.”

From the moment they met, Felix had never gotten along with Dedue. Hatred burned in his throat for no reason other than that Dedue was close to Dimitri, occupying a space Felix might have filled, had the world not been so cruel. Reality being what it was, Felix was sure Dedue had cast him as the villain in his mind – someone to be overcome, an uncomfortable truth-teller. But Dedue was never so weak-minded.

 _You’re not the only one who will lay his life down for His Highness_. Dedue had said to him once, after a routine mission to dispatch some bandit. Dimitri was injured by a stray arrow, and Felix’s feet had carried him there so quickly he barely even remembers it, slashing through the battlefield with a singular focus. Dedue had scolded Felix for his recklessness back then too; and the truth of it runs into him like a sword pommel to the gut.

_I never said I’d die for him._

Dedue’s eyes were always so calm, undisturbed waters. _You didn’t have to._

“Felix!!” Ingrid’s screech is deafening; she’s sweeping down close to where they’re huddled, and now Dedue is shoving Dimitri against Felix’s side, urging them toward a backstreet that leads outside the city borders. Felix tightens his grip around Dimitri’s waist and stumbles forward, feet heavy in his boots. It’s not practical to try and hoist Dimitri onto a horse – they’d never fit in the hidden alleyway, and he’s barely conscious, besides, bleeding down the front of his armor. It’s obvious Mercedes has done her best, but there must be some poison magic keeping the wound gaping.

It doesn’t matter now. Felix grits his teeth and drags Dimitri’s hunched form out through the cracked stone streets, across the small plain between the city walls and the nature beyond, Pegasus knights clashing overhead. Out to the forest, and the promise of respite.

The blood makes for an obvious trail, dark red cobblestone paving the way for any of Cornelia’s mages to follow their path past the tree line. Felix does his best to shuffle the dirt, cover their tracks, take an unusual serpentine trail through the dense forest. But he can’t remember where to go now, can’t make sense of anything through the dust stinging his eyes.

“Felix,” Dimitri’s voice is rough as sandpaper. He’s been clumsily keeping up with Felix’s steps, but he stops now, falling against a nearby tree. Without thinking, Felix gathers him back into his arms, so Dimitri can rest against his chest. “I’m dying.”

It’s true. Felix knows this, but he’s never been able to respond to anything Dimitri says without arguing. And so, he clenches his fist in Dimitri’s dirtied, bloodied cloak and croaks out, “You’re not.”

Just a bit longer, just to a clearing Felix can see up ahead. They can make it that far, and then they can rest. Then Felix can try his hand at purging the poison from Dimitri’s wounds, the few meager white magic spells his father taught him finally coming in handy. Just a few more steps.

They stop at the base of a giant, mossed tree, and Felix helps Dimitri to the ground, still holding him close, resting Dimitri’s head in his lap gingerly. Dimitri feels small in his arms like this, like back when they were young, before Dimitri hit his obnoxious growth spur, shooting up like a weed, until Felix couldn’t talk to him without having to crane his neck. How many times had Felix wished Dimitri was the one looking up at him instead? Now he is, gazing up at Felix with glazed, bloodshot eyes, face pallid, lips blue. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Not like this.

“You know, Felix,” Dimitri’s voice is a ghost of a whisper. It still occupies Felix’s entire world. “I really thought you hated me.”

“Idiot.” Felix doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tear hits Dimitri’s face below him, tracking down his cheek. And still, he’s too proud to say it. Even with the promise of a blank slate, the assurance that Dimitri will remember nothing. Still, Felix bites his lips and holds in the words that bubble up in his throat.

Dimitri dies with what might be called a smile on his face.

It takes a beat too long for the world to dissolve away around him. Felix wonders, not for the first time, if this is really it. Is this where it ends? Was this his last chance, his last attempt, ending with Dimitri cold and unseeing in his arms?

He doesn’t have time to wonder. Felix sighs, and the world goes black again.

+

Most Faerghan kids grow up listening to bedtime tales about Kyphon and Loog. Felix, for all of his childhood adoration of knights and heroes, never takes to the legendary heroes. Maybe he never did like listening to the tales of dead men.

 _Okay,_ Rodrigue would say, eyes sparkling. _Can I tell you a story about you and Dimitri instead?_

So easy to fool, but Felix would nod furiously. He loved hearing _these_ tales his father would spin, epics of the misadventures and triumphs of the future King Dimitri Blaiddyd and his Right Hand Felix Fraldarius. To any observer, these tales might sound suspiciously familiar to the stories of Kyphon and Loog. To Felix, before he knew any better, these were nothing short of magic, glimpses into what could be.

One tale sticks out in his mind – most any child who grew up in Faerghus would know it, a fable about the virtue of diligence, drilled into the heads of kids who were taught to swing a sword before they were taught to read and write. 

In it, Loog – or, well, Dimitri in Felix’s mind – gifts a precious sword to Kyphon. It is rumored to have special magical properties that will only reveal themselves upon repeated use. But Kyphon hides the sword away, too afraid to damage a valuable gift given to him by a dear friend.

 _I would never do that_ , Felix tells his father.

 _Wouldn’t you?_ Rodrigue counters. Because of course Felix would treat anything given to him by Dimitri as something precious. Even back then, he already had, with every gift and trinket given at the end of a visit to Fhirdiad treated with great care, locked in the glass-doored cabinet in the corner of Felix’s room. (Probably there to this day, he thinks.)

But the sword – Kyphon is forced to use it during a difficult battle, hoping the magical properties will reveal themselves, to no avail. Loog rescues his friend, but not before they both suffer severe injuries. The sword shatters during battle. And the special power? It is only that it would become more and more resilient the more it was used, until it was nigh unbreakable. Without that training, it becomes useless.

The moral is simple, exalting the virtues of training. And a second lesson that Rodrigue sneaks in: there is no use in being worried about something falling apart. Some things, like weapons, are meant to be broken.

(Felix grows up and wonders what else is meant to be broken, what else Faerghus would sacrifice for the greater good.)

Nevertheless, Felix takes these lessons to heart. He trains diligently, embraces repetition and endless drills even when others start to lag. Really, it’s his own fault, and so very unlike him, that over so much time and so many timelines resetting, that Felix starts to get sloppy. The _entropy_ Sylvain spoke of starts to wear on him – if he cannot predict what will happen, what is the point of training and planning anyway?

And Dimitri – even Dimitri, Felix cannot predict.

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

They send Ingrid to speak to him this time, and she comes back with her head bowed, fingers clenching around her lance. “I cannot—” her voice cracks; she collects herself. “I don’t know what to say. Perhaps he is right.”

It had been going too well, too smoothly. They arrive at Dimitri’s cell with ample time to spare. But he will not leave. He growls and snaps at anyone who comes close, like the caged animal he’s become. Dedue is not there to talk sense to him, already gone with Ashe to the stables; Ingrid is too easily swayed by Dimitri’s notions of justice and fairness; Mercedes’ soft voice can’t reach him; Sylvain can’t gather his voice at all.

That shape of blue and black that Felix would have called Dimitri in a past life shifts further into the corner. “Leave,” Felix says, and it takes the rest of the group a moment to realize he means _them_. “I’ll speak to him.”

The grime of the cell is what Felix expects from accommodations for a political prisoner. But still, the dank walls only seem to degrade each time he sees them, each iteration piling on the dirt and moss and rust. Dimitri seems to be the same – a bit dirtier each time Felix catches sight of him, worn down, face drawn and pale.

Like time is passing after all.

“You’re pathetic.” _Great opening line_ , Felix thinks. But it’s instinctual, the disgust that sprouts in his chest. Disgust with _himself_ more than anyone, because this creature – this _beast_ – owns so much of Felix’s waking and sleeping life.

Dimitri’s laugh is dry as straw. “Good to see you again, Felix. I apologize your pledge to save me will go unfulfilled.”

“Shut up.” Felix crosses the cell in two quicks strides, digging a hand in Dimitri’s hair, yanking his head up to look him in the eye. “I’m not negotiating with you. We’re leaving, _now_.”

Over the years, Felix grows accustomed to hiding his feelings, keeping them off his face, buried just under the surface. But when he breaks, Dimitri is the first to know – if only because he can’t help but mirror those same emotions on his own face, like they’re infectious. Now, Felix sees Dimitri’s lip wobble, his gaunt face sag even further, and he knows that the fear must be plain on his own face. The fear that all of this will come to nothing – _again_.

“Felix, please, think of the consequences,” Dimitri’s voice goes thin. “A fugitive prince will only cause civil war. So many deaths—”

“Beginning with yours,” Felix spits, tossing Dimitri’s head away, letting him slump against the cell wall. “You don’t get to play the martyr and leave the rest of us to clean up the mess.”

Dimitri shakes his head; dust flies off of him, like he’s already a relic left to rot. “I cannot allow war to come because of my—"

“War is already here!” Felix kneels down, grabbing at Dimitri’s shoulders, feeling hysterical and defeated all at once. _Entropy_ , his mind reminds. One small change, a nightmare, the whispering of a ghost Felix can’t see and can’t control – and it all comes crumbling down.

They never fought as children. Felix remembers that, in flash of white, as Dimitri’s hands grip his arms, throwing him down to the cold ground, trying to pin him against the damp floor. _Always thick as thieves those two_. Felix scrambles away, kicking Dimitri in the gut, loosening a dagger from his belt holster, holding it in front of him as he kneels up. _Oh, you know Felix. He just started crying and Dimitri apologized right away!_

“I won’t hurt you, Dimitri.” But he could. If he really wanted to, Felix could.

Dimitri is crouched, wild-eyed like a wounded animal, and Felix can tell from the way he moves that he’s been tortured, that there are deep magic wounds hiding under unbroken skin, paining him as he stands on unsteady feet, hobbling toward Felix. “I don’t want this.” His voice shakes and as his resolve stands firm. “I won’t be like her.”

 _Her._ Here is the difference: Edelgard will sacrifice whomever she needs to for the brighter, better, more just future she imagines. Dimitri will sacrifice himself for the sake of saving even one person.

How can you convince a man like that to live for himself?

“Dimitri, please.” The dagger trembles in Felix’s hand. After the Western Rebellion, they can’t _stop_ fighting. But the fighting goes like this: Felix shows his teeth, and Dimitri shrinks back, a tactical retreat. “I don’t—For _once_ I don’t want to argue. Please, come with me.”

 _Those two are always bickering, what’s the deal?_ Dimitri lurches forward, drags a palm down his face. _There’s always something, isn’t there?_ The shape of him darts toward Felix, as if to bowl him over, tackle him to the ground. Felix drops the dagger on instinct, lets it clatter to the ground, braces himself with a shout.

 _Boar._ Felix spits it out without much thought. But what had his father always said about wild boars, when they were roaming the frosty hills of Fraldarius, hunting for game? Right – boars can’t stop once they start running.

They crash together in a thunderclap, all the more vicious for the nonsense of it, the futility of fighting this way. There’s a sickening _crack!_ as Felix hits the ground, but it’s not _his_ body taking the beating – even in the hysteria, the confusion and rage, Dimitri is still cradling Felix’s head with one massive hand, shielding him from splitting his skull open on the stone floor. It’s Dimitri’s knuckles, instead, that are battered and bloodied, dragging against the cracked flagstone.

Felix uses the leverage to roll over top of Dimitri. “You don’t even—You don’t _know_ how much I—” The crack in his voice is so revealing, and Dimitri goes still for a split second, the agony laid bare on that sunken, tortured face. What were they fighting about? What were they _ever_ fighting about?

Dimitri’s lips part. For one dizzying, world-shaking moment, Felix thinks he might kiss him. Instead, Dimitri presses something into Felix’s palm and says, “Kill me yourself.”

The dagger. _Dimitri,_ Felix goes to say – but this isn’t Dimitri, not anymore. This is a beast, a creature made from pain and torture, molded by the cruel, random arrangement of the universe. Felix gets the distinct feeling that he’s being taught a lesson.

“I won’t.”

Clammy hands fight with Felix’s, twisting the grip of the dagger until it cuts against Felix’s palm, a smear of red, a flash of pain. And maybe that’s how it happens, how the hilt slips from Felix’s grip as the creature that would be Dimitri attempts to hoist it up above his head, across the tender slip of his throat. _No—_ a bit higher now, falling on that blazing spot of blue—

They’d traveled to one of the few farms in Faerghus as kids, an exalted visit from the Crown Prince and his dear friend, second son to Duke Fraldarius. It was in the southernmost province, the air sweet with the smell of fresh, ripened fruit. Felix picks up a cherry-red tomato and—

 _You crushed it._ Dimitri’s voice is small as a secret. There is a crest-crushed tomato in Felix’s palm, pulpy and red.

“Dimitri—” Felix fights the urge to throw up, has to dive to the side to dry heave, even as Dimitri noiselessly removes the dagger from his skull. Not even so much as a grunt as he dislodges it in one swift, slick movement. Not even as the blood pours down from the gashed eye socket, gathers in his open mouth, stains his teeth. And now, the creature finally heaves, gagging on its own blood.

It isn’t the wound that kill him. That horror, as usual, is reserved for Cornelia’s guards, rounding the corner with indelible timing with a wave of miasma that clogs Felix’s lungs, washes the room in a haze, burns up the blood, the crushed remnants of Dimitri’s eye, the dagger – all of it.

A small, small comfort.

+

_You thought you could leave no mark?_

_A foolish mistake, but a forgivable one. Don’t make it again._

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

“Your Highness, your eye…”

“Oh, Cornelia’s doing I’m afraid. Please don’t fret over me, I still have another left.”

“Heh, glad you’re in good spirits still.”

“Even so, please let me try to heal it?”

“I don’t think we have time, do we? Don’t waste your magic on me, Mercedes, really I’m fine.”

“I guess you’re right... Shall we go, then?”

“Oh—yes, come on. Felix, do we have the signal from Ashe?”

“Felix?”

“Felix?”

“ _Felix?”_

All of it a mess of background noise in Felix’s ears, like he’s listening in through a pane of glass, voices muffled and far-away. Here Dimitri stands – a new Dimitri, in a new timeline – and still the wound is there, fresh as if Felix had just dropped the dagger. It’s wrapped haphazardly in white gauze, but it’s there all the same.

“Yes,” Felix responds, finally unsticking his throat. “Let’s go.”

It could be a coincidence – but day after day, now, Dimitri’s eyes is gone. The excuses vary: some strange torture on Cornelia’s part, an accident, an infection. But the eye never reappears. Dimitri, it could be said, looks handsome with an eyepatch. Felix would never say as much.

The loss of the eye itself doesn’t seem to impede his ability to fight. In fact, he seems to move with newfound grace, as if this was how everything was always supposed to work out. Like a little slice of fate. Still – Felix wonders if that is all that has remained from these past iterations, these broken timelines. A strange voice, haughty and childlike, seeps into Felix’s dreams sometimes. It warns him to be wary.

Not everything that is lost can be regained.

Would the others suffer the same fate if they were injured seriously in battle? What if they were killed? And Dimitri – if the wounds stay with him, do the memories of death remain as well? Does the horror of the torture he endured pile up inside his mind? Does that beast Felix caught sight of still lurk in the dusty cobwebbed corners? Is it even worth trying to save such a man?

 _Yes_. Felix’s mind answers too quickly.

Some things, it seems, can never be changed.

Like this: fighting side-by-side is easy as breathing. Dimitri’s back against Felix’s is warm – _he’s alive, really alive –_ and Felix falls effortlessly into covering Dimitri’s new blind spot. Soldiers who have pledged their life to the Blaiddyd line seem to crumple at the sight of Dimitri, that bright royal blue. They kneel, and make clear their loyalty. Cornelia’s mages are less cooperative, of course. But they all fall in turn.

“Dedue is hurt.” Mercedes is out of breath as she runs up to Felix. They’ve made it outside the walls of the city – Felix, Annette, Mercedes, and Dedue – and Felix can already see Sylvain bringing up the rear, bringing the horses around. But here is another little roadblock.

“I can heal him but—” Mercedes shakes her head. “He’ll need rest. There is only so much I can do.”

“Where is he?” Dimitri looks ready to drop everything and rush to Dedue’s side.

“With Ashe.” Mercedes’ hands still him. “Please, Your Highness, go. He would want you to.”

Dimitri goes stiff, but he hardly has to turn toward Felix, doesn’t even have to open his mouth—

“I’ll go with him.”

Sylvain is close; Felix snatches the reins for the smaller of the horses from him. Annette gives him a small, meaningful look. “Felix…” she starts, at the same moment that Dimitri says, “I could never allow—”

Felix snorts. The fatigue from another day of fighting and skulking through cramped, dark catacombs is settling in; he’s not in a mood to argue. “You’re not _allowing_ anything, boar. I’m coming with you. Can’t let you get yourself killed and ruin all our hard work.”

And this: it feels natural as anything as they break into a cantor across the field that separates the forest from the city, slowing as they disappear past the dense tree line, the din of fighting fading away. At eleven years old, on the back of his first (and last) horse, Felix had challenge Dimitri to a race. Dimitri had won, of course; he was always more suited to horseback.

Now, he lets Felix take the lead. “Follow me.”

Felix doesn’t look back. He trusts Dimitri will be there.

They camp out that first night after a full day of riding. Get a fire going in silence, trap a rabbit in silence, eat in silence. Felix takes the first watch, but he never actually wakes Dimitri up to take second watch, unsure of if he wants to let the Prince rest or if he truly doesn’t trust anyone but himself to keep Dimitri alive – even Dimitri himself.

(What a horrible, possessive, slimy feeling it is.)

It’s another day and a half before they reach the destination, and when Dimitri speaks his voice is hoarse from lack of use. “When did you…”

They’re deep in Blaiddyd territory now. Going south wasn’t Felix’s first plan, but the northern territories of Fraldarius and Gautier are surely the first play any Empire spies would look for Dimitri. So, this will be their haven for now: a small, overgrown cabin, surrounded by trees grown so close that the cabin melts into the surroundings, like it sprouted from the forest itself. Roots are breaking out through the foundation; one ancient tree bends over the roof at such an angle that, surely, one day it will come crashing down and destroy the entire house. Still. It will do for now.

“Ingrid scouted it out,” Felix explains, tying the horses up and shooing Dimitri through the door. Everything inside looks dusty and long-forgotten, but this isn’t exactly a luxurious vacation they’re taking.

Felix allows himself to exhale for the first time in – well, he can’t even remember.

“Felix, I had no Idea, you would—” Dimitri looks at Felix while Felix looks everywhere _but_ at him, busying himself with unloading their gear. “I am not worthy of this trouble.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” It’s a nicer thought than even Felix anticipated coming out of his mouth. He can’t help the way he goes pink, tossing his pack onto the one bed in the corner of the room, tugging instead at Dimitri’s coat to get him to sit. He summons the tiniest bit of bravery he didn’t know he had left to say, “Let me get a look at that eye.”

“Do you—”

“Know how to heal?” Felix snorts. “You’re forgetting who Professor made perform at the White Heron Cup. That dancer training was more white magic than I ever needed to know.” 

Dimitri sits obediently on one of the rickety wooden chairs in what might generously be called a kitchen. “Your dance training, I had… forgotten that,” he says, in the tone of a man who certain did _not_ forget about that, or about the way Felix’s legs had looked, long and lean against the gossamer and gold.

“Quiet now,” Felix mumbles, trying to fight down the ruddy blush that lights up his cheeks. He stands between Dimitri’s legs, slowly unwrapping the messy bandages from his head. The wound is… not quite as bad as he expected. It’s different from the wound that would have occurred from Felix’s dagger accidentally stabbing him. Instead of a clumsy gash, the incision is almost clinical, like the eye was taken out carefully and purposefully.

A tremble climbs under Felix’s skin as he covers the empty socket with one hand, concentrating the magic in his palm. “Dimitri… what really happened?”

Dimitri goes visibly relaxed as the magic courses through him. He always was soft for healing magic. “It’s no matter. Please don’t worry yourself.”

 _It’s my fault_. And Felix doesn’t realize he’s spoken out loud until Dimitri responds, “You have to stop taking the weight on your shoulders, Felix.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Dimitri huffs out a laugh; the hot air tickles Felix’s bare wrist. “Indeed. We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”

The magic can’t bring his eye back. But it can calm the soreness, speed up the healing, soothe Dimitri’s ache. He goes placid and soft under Felix’s hands, almost clingy as he tentatively places his hands on either side of Felix’s waist, anchoring himself, rubbing small circles into Felix’s hips with his thumbs.

“Felix…” Feather-soft. Felix might bat him away if he wasn’t so bone-tired, if he wasn’t so weak-willed to let himself take what solace he can.

Felix falls in love with Dimitri when he’s thirteen years old and stuffed into his brother’s old formal wear at some royal function or another. Dimitri is a picture-perfect prince, ripped from the pages of one of Felix’s old bedtime tales. But they’ve known each other since they were both babbling and knocking their soft heads together. Surely, there’s no reason to be so struck by Dimitri, so bowed by him. But Felix is, all the same.

 _I feel quite stuffy in this_. Dimitri complains, tugging at the many buttons decorating his outfit. Felix is too distracted by the way Dimitri’s shoulders are starting to fill out his dress coat, the way his new haircut shows the long nape of his neck as he bows to dignitaries and noblemen and women.

 _You look fine._ Felix nearly swallows his tongue trying not to scream.

Felix _realizes_ he’s fallen in love with Dimitri when he’s thirteen years old. When he actually fell – well, the matter is still up for debate.

And then – Glenn dies. And then – Dimitri dies too, as far as Felix is concerned.

(But who would go through such trouble to save a dead man?)

“Your hands are so warm,” Dimitri mumbles. He sounds halfway to sleep, head bobbing forward, until he’s almost rested against Felix’s chest, the slow throb of white magic purging his mind.

Felix stays quiet, holds Dimitri’s head in his hands and lets the magic say what he still cannot.

+

There is more than enough to keep them busy as the days drag on – cleaning the cabin, caring for the horses, gathering provisions. Not to mention keeping a watchful eye on the sky for any of Cornelia’s scouts. It’s certainly not a _glamorous_ existence, but they establish a neat routine, and Felix gives Dimitri as wide a berth as he can. That first night, Dimitri’s hands on his waist and trusting head in Felix’s hands – it might have been the first time they touched outside of regular training since Duscur.

Felix decides he has enough to worry about without adding _childhood crush reemergence_ to that list.

It’s embarrassing to remember it now, the way he used to follow Dimitri around like a sad puppy, all big eyes and tears sticking to his lashes. Glenn used to tease him mercilessly every time they would visit the capital, Felix bouncing off the walls of the carriage the whole ride there, all the _are we there yet_ s and _can we go faster_ s. Glenn hadn’t even been that much older than them, but he still looked so wise in his way, petting across Felix’s brow. _Your prince will still be waiting for you, Fe._

That feels so long ago now, time stretched for Felix after living one day so many times.

Dimitri starts getting antsy after a week, insisting on Felix letting him take watch shifts – at first, Felix refuses. Dimitri is still healing from a major injury, after all, and it doesn’t make sense to put the biggest target in all of Fodlan right out in the open for the taken. He softens his stance after he falls asleep in the middle of his watch, and wakes up with his boots removed and a blanket spread across his shoulders.

There’s only one bed in the cabin, among the other sparse furnishings. Dimitri spreads one of the bedrolls over top of the threadbare mattress, along with one of the two thin blankets they have. There are a few chairs, a fireplace with a cauldron, a bench that has seen much better days. Felix doesn’t bother with the cabin at all, other than the bare-minimum cleaning – he’s more concerned with scouting the area, setting up traps and magic barriers when he can, anxiety creeping up his throat like bile.

(They’ve never gotten this far before. He doesn’t know what to do, much less how to feel.)

But Dimitri seems intent on making their humble abode habitable. He takes on the scavenging while Felix hunts, and returns not just with some edible plants and fruits, but with flowers as well. An old vulnery glass is used as a vase, and the plant makes its home on the windowsill.

“Dedue always speaks about it,” Dimitri says, when he notices Felix’s eyes lingering on the flower. “The benefit of having small, beautiful things around. I think we deserve that much, no?”

Dimitri looks so pleased with himself that Felix can’t bring himself to argue.

They’re both horrible cooks, unluckily enough, but they make do. Whatever catch of the day is tossed in the pot over the heart with water and some herbs. Dimitri insists on complimenting Felix’s cooking every time.

“Save your flattery,” Felix grumbles, picking a bit of fish scale from his teeth. “It will keep us alive. You need your strength, so eat.”

“Still,” Dimitri says, quiet. In his way. “Thank you for your effort.”

The stew is suddenly going rancid in Felix’s stomach. It’s always like this with him and Dimitri – it’s always fine until it isn’t, until Felix gets the itch to scratch under Dimitri’s skin, see the real man underneath. “Fucking stop that.”

“Stop… what, exactly?”

“The niceties,” Felix spits. “It’s just you and me, no one is here to judged your proper princeliness. I want—” What does he want? _Who_ does he want?

“You want the real Dimitri?” Dimitri finishes for him. Head tilting so he can catch the look on Felix’s face, flames from the hearth casting him in bronze and gold. “I wonder if I even remember how to be him.”

Felix tosses his leftovers back into the cauldron, getting up hastily. “Whatever. I’m taking first watch tonight.”

“Wait, please—” Dimitri’s reaches for him at the last second, their fingertips catching against each other. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t—I’m not—" he opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, like the words will come to him if he starts over enough times. Felix can relate to the feeling.

And so, he takes a bit of pity; finds a small kernel of trust that he had almost forgotten about. “It’s fine. Really. I know you’re trying.”

Dimitri looks like the world has just been lifted from his shoulders, and he nods, small and tight.

Felix sits on the roof and carves nonsense shapes in the wood until morning, and definitely doesn’t think about the fact that he’d do almost anything to make Dimitri smile like that again.

+

**29 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Dimitri has decided to build a table. “Felix, I’ve decided to build a table!”

Or, well – the table building is only part of it. Dimitri first decides that they have been neglecting their hygiene for too long – _even if it is just the two of us, let us at least be presentable_ – and drags a grumbling Felix to the river nearby.

“Did you ever visit the sauna? At Garreg Mach?” Dimitri is surprisingly un-shy about stripping down in front of Felix, who valiantly shields his eyes from the span of muscle and scars. He’s filled out, even just in the one year since then. “I was always passing out, trying to stay in as long as the Professor.” He laughs jovially, and this time Felix can’t stop himself from watching how his chest moves with his laughter, abs tightening. He swallows an overly-healthy mouthful of saliva.

“No,” is all that Felix says, which is a lie. Professor was persuasive enough to coax Felix to the sauna on occasion, where he’d also passed out, to his great mortification. Faerghus men never were good with the heat.

The river is even more refreshing than Felix expects, and a strange thought finally occurs to him – when was the last time he actually took a bath? With the same day repeating, and everything being reset each time, he’d never really had the need to, all this time. He or Dimitri had always died before taking a bath became necessary. And the realization makes him split into sudden peals of laughter.

“F-Felix?” Dimitri’s face lights up with curiosity, and he swims over to where Felix is waist-deep in the water. “What’s so amusing?”

“N-Nothing, nothing,” Felix doubles over, so close to the water that the surface ripples from the sound of his laughter, and it only make Felix more delirious with it, his breath catching in his throat.

It must be infectious, because Dimitri starts laughing too, a deep rumble from low in his chest that pitches up when Felix reaches out to swat him. “Don’t be mad at me, you started it!”

“Y-You—” Felix’s eyes are prickling with tears, and he shoves at Dimitri’s chest – _Goddess his chest is big now_ – something uncharacteristically playful, like a cat batting at a toy. He’s too giddy to even be mad. “I can’t tell you, but it’s just funny, okay!”

Dimitri wrestles his hands away, and soon they’re gripping hands, palm-to-palm wrestling, each trying to get the upper hand and dunk the other one beneath the water. Both grinning ear-to-ear, teeth gritted and toes digging into the silty bottom of the river as they wrestle.

“Where’s that Blaiddyd strength, _boar_?” Felix says, voice still sparkling with leftover laughter.

Dimitri does the best he can do to shrug with Felix still pushing his arms back so forcefully. “I don’t think it would be fair to you.”

“Ha! Shut up and come at me like a man!”

“Very bold words, Fraldarius,” Dimitri intones, faux-serious, and in one movement he twists Felix’s wrists to throw him off balance, then pounces on him and dunks him under the water.

When Felix comes up, spluttering and soaked and gasping for air, Dimitri gives him an apologetic look. Felix can already imagine him offering up his head, saying something like _Did you want to dunk me too? It’s only fair._ And Felix would recognize it as a challenge, rather than an equitable offer.

“Did you—” Dimitri’s words dissolve into blubbering as Felix grips his shoulders and pushes him into the water, holding him under the surface, fingertips flexing against the firm shoulder muscles.

They never did know when to stop, both so competitive even over the stupidest thing. Dimitri swipes at Felix’s legs, tipping him over until he splashes backwards into the river; Felix counters with a firm hand around Dimitri’s ankle, tugging him down until they’re nearly nose-to-nose, both of them giggling like fools, like children, like there’s not a war on. It’s dangerous, to be this loud, to let their laughter carry over the noise of the forest, the chittering insects and snapping twigs. It’s dangerous, for Felix dust off the fondness in his chest when Dimitri’s eyes squint shut. It’s dangerous, but Felix can’t stop now, can’t hold back the way his lungs catch on nothing as he laughs, until he’s slapping Dimitri away, doubled over from the force of it.

“I haven’t, um,” Dimitri pauses to chuckle, like he’s squeezing the last bit of laughter out of his body, to no avail. “It’s been a while since I saw you laugh like that.”

“It’s been—well, yeah, it’s been a while,” Felix pants out, grinning so hard his face is sore.

If a winner of their wrestling match had to be declared, it would be Dimitri. He’s got Felix’s wrists captured, one in each hand, and when he pulls Felix’s arms apart to get a better look at him, there’s not much Felix can to but squirm under his gaze.

“What are you doing?” Felix goes red, but the stupid grin is still on his face, the giddiness slow to leave him.

Dimitri tilts his head to the side, smiling. Somewhere in the tussle, his eyepatch got dislodged, and the scarring of his eye is stark against that perfect, princely face. He might be more handsome like this, Felix thinks. “Just let me look at you, okay?”

Felix goes to say _Absolutely not, what the fuck,_ but what comes out instead is a breathy, “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

Felix was always the odd one out, different than the other boys growing up, in both obvious and subtle ways. He’s barely five years old when he stops wearing dresses and cuts his hair and says _call me Felix_ , and to his surprise his friends never skip a beat. Maybe that’s why he’s never been shy or insecure, never worried about going shirtless during training or changing in the baths, never worried about feeling _less_ than.

Felix never minds curious eyes watching him. He couldn’t care less what they think. But Dimitri—

“I missed you,” Dimitri says, soft as anything. He’s not even looking at Felix’s naked body, but at his face, studying him like a work of art, like he’s trying to memorize every curve and plane of him.

“I’m right here,” Felix mumbles, squirming a bit in Dimitri’s grasp. He releases Felix almost instantly, seems to come back to himself in one rush of embarrassment, spluttering and apologizing.

“That was—I mean, I—” Dimitri runs a hand down his face, but it doesn’t do much to hide his goofy grin. “It’s been a while since we,” he pauses, struggling for the right words. “Since we were able to be together, like this.”

Felix snorts, reaching for a cloth to actually start cleaning the grime from his skin. “You mean without a weapon in our hands?”

“Ah, that might be it.”

There’s some soap deep in the packs that Annette put together for them, and Felix fishes it out, lathering the cloth with it. “Turn around.”

Dimitri obeys instantly before even thinking about it. “Wait are you— _oh._ ”

Felix thanks the Goddess that Dimitri can’t actually see the furious red of his face, the blush that spreads down his neck and colors his collar bones. He runs the cloth over Dimitri’s back, cups water in his palm to wash off the suds, lets his hands linger just a bit too long, fingers dancing across the tense muscles.

“Loosen up,” Felix mumbles. “You’d think I was going to stab you in the back.”

“You _have_ threatened to stab me on a few occasions,” Dimitri ruminates. But he goes loose and pliant under Felix’s hands anyway. “But I know you never would.”

Of course. Dimitri’s always been like this, all unshakeable trust and undying loyalty. Felix is a lot more like him than he wants to admit. Still—

He taps Dimitri’s shoulder to indicate he’s done, and turns around, ducks his head into his chest to hide the embarrassment. “Get my back.”

“O-Okay.”

Still, would he have trusted Dimitri like this without all those endless days, the forceful forgiveness that comes with them? Felix doesn’t want to be grateful to something that has caused so much pain. But if it saves Dimitri—

“A little lower.”

—and if it somehow saves Felix in the process—

“I remember this scar… you got this when we were little.”

—then maybe there was a point to this after all.

Dimitri’s hands feel giant against the small of Felix’s back, and Felix allows himself the small indulgence, lets his eyes flutter shut and his body relax as Dimitri washes him. He’s muttering something, always too awkward to just let silence be silence, and Felix nods and grunts in return. He can’t remember the last time he felt so calm.

By the time they both drag themselves from the river and dry off, the sun is high and unseasonably hot. Dimitri helps Felix buckle up his boots, and Felix cuts a new eyepatch for Dimitri out of some spare cloth, affixing it around his head while Dimitri sits with hands fisted in his lap.

Building the table itself isn’t so hard, after all.

“It’s a… prototype,” Dimitri announces, wincing as he reveals his masterpiece. Felix had helped him gather the wood after they dried off from the river, then left the prince to his own devices. What results is something rickety and ugly and a little lopsided. But it does look approximately like a table.

And it works. That night, when Felix scoops out two bowls’ worth of Whatever We Happened to Scrounge Up Stew for dinner, they’re able to sit at the table and eat. It feels more civilized than squatting next to the cauldron, sipping directly from the ladle like starved animals.

“Not bad.” It’s the worst non-compliment, but Dimitri still beams.

“Maybe I’ll make a bench tomorrow. You can put it in front of the hearth so you don’t have to crouch down while you’re cooking!”

Felix twirls the spoon in his hand. “Why am I becoming the housewife in this scenario?”

Dimitri does a spit take so violent Felix can see his soup travel halfway across the room. “That’s—I’m not—I can certainly attempt to cook, a-although you know I can’t—”

“Shut up.” But Felix is smiling, even as he goes a bit pink in the ears, so unused to teasing Dimitri like this, to feeling anything but confused, bubbling rage at the sight of Dimitri flustered and sweating.

They finish dinner in silence; but it’s a comfortable silence this time. It’s nice. _Too_ nice, and if experience has taught Felix anything, it’s to not trust comfort. Something feels off.

But Felix just can’t place it. So, he stops trying to.

+

**14 th of the Red Wolf Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Weeks pass like this. Their nighttime watches grow more and more lax. After all, if Cornelia’s mages were going to find them all, wouldn’t they have already? It’s a sloppy, undisciplined way of thinking, very un-Faerghan. But it’s too tempting, especially now when the weather is turning icy and snow showers make the decision between huddling inside or shivering on the cold roof a simple one.

They still only have one bed. _I’ll sleep on the floor_ , Dimitri offers, face beet red from more than just the cold biting at his nose.

“Idiot,” Felix rumbles out, still coming out of his sleep. He was having such a good dream, is the thing. “Just don’t forget to take your boots off, I don’t want dirt in the bed.”

(Truthfully, neither of them gets much sleep that night, curled up back-to-back.)

But where Felix is so used to repetition – now more than ever – Dimitri is not built to stand still.

It starts at dinner, pleading with Felix to let him go scout out surrounding areas, see the status of any nearby towns, see if the Imperial Army has somehow made it this far north. It continues the next day, and the next, with Dimitri prodding Felix for details about word from any of their friends.

“When it’s time to reach out, they will,” Felix tells him. But if it’s almost the middle of the Red Wolf Moon, then Sylvain is already late with the message they had planned for him to delivery. Then again, it was supposed to be Dedue here with Dimitri, not Felix. 

That night, Felix turns around and lets himself huddle against Dimitri’s back, forehead pressed in that spot between his shoulder blades, so he can feel Dimitri breathing, so he knows he’s still alive.

A lot of things aren’t going to plan.

In the morning, Dimitri comes back from hunting looking worse for the wear, and without any catches to speak of. He paces back and forth for a while until Felix swats at him to stand still, so he can pick the leaves and sticks out of his hair.

“Felix,” Dimitri looks down at him with that one huge, baleful eye. “What are we doing?”

Felix goes stiff, a momentary lapse before his fingers resume moving through Dimitri’s hair, plucking a bit of pine from the golden locks. “I’m keeping you from looking like a fool. And then I’m going to chop some firewood.”

Dimitri makes a frustrated noise, shakes his head. “Not—I don’t mean _this_.” He paces for a few more minutes after Felix retreats to follow up on his firewood-chopping promise. And it’s another few minutes before he decides what he really means to say, turning to Felix with eyebrows drawn tight. “What are we doing, you and I? Why are you wasting your time here?”

“I hate it when you ask stupid questions.” Felix sets a log up on an old tree stump, and swings down. “Keeping the crown prince alive is an obvious thing to do.”

“Please, Felix.” The crease in Dimitri’s forehead is deepening. Felix wants to reach out and smooth it with his thumb. “You could be—you have so much else you could be doing. I am not worth this trouble, you should—”

 _Crack!_ Another log splits in half, and Felix tries to steady his breathing. The axe is lodged in the stump from the force of his swing, just a bit too hard.

“Dedue—he swore his life to me, and still, I would never expect him to follow me to such lengths!” Dimitri’s voice is taking on a panicked edge. “So, what is it Felix? What are we doing? Why are you still here?”

 _Because you’re still here_ , Felix’s mind answers, and he has to bite down hard on his lip to keep the words from spilling out. _Because if you’re alive, wherever you are is where I want to go._

Want—not need. Fuck, he’s in deep.

Instead, Felix swigs the axe down instead, spits out, “I hate that about you, you know.” And Dimitri’s eye actually goes soft instead of scared; he steps forward, shortening the distance between them. “You don’t get to decide how I spend my life. Only I do.”

“Your life,” Dimitri repeats, tilting his head up to look at the canopy of trees, dusted with white from last night’s snow storm. “You’re saying you’d like to spend it with me?”

Felix’s heart stutters in his chest, and his entire body seems to follow suit – he drops the axe and turns, but his foot catches on the undergrowth and he stumbles, bracing a hand against the span of Dimitri’s chest. Always there to catch him; Felix pulls away quick, like he’s been branded. “I’m keeping you alive until you take the throne. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“And after?” Dimitri takes another step into Felix’s space; it feels like a threat and a promise all at once. “Surely, my life will be in danger from assassination plots and insurrection. You would be happy to leave me to that?”

 _You’ll have a Kings Guard,_ Felix wants to say. _You’ll have more knights at your command than you’ll know what to do with._ But the thought of it – of Dimitri, alone on his throne, surrounded by obedient, faceless soldiers – sits sour in Felix’s stomach. It’s difficult to imagine the scene without Felix in it, seated to Dimitri’s right as always.

(Funny, how this image never changes in Felix’s mind, never has, not even when he thought he hated Dimitri.)

“One day at a time,” Felix breathes out. And he’ll leave it at that, even as he thinks of all the days to come, of all the years he wants to promise to Dimitri right now, of all that he wants him to live and see. Of all that he wants to be there for.

“One day at a time,” Dimitri echoes, and reaches out carefully to squeeze Felix’s hand in his. For once, Felix doesn’t pull away. “And so makes a lifetime.”

+

When it comes, Felix is in that small space between wakefulness and sleep, suspended. He hears Dimitri before he sees him, a sharp hiss as he stubs his toe on the table. Felix sits up slowly, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and asks, “What the hell, Dimitri?”

He supposed to be outside, keeping watch. He’s supposed to be anywhere but climbing into their tiny, rickety bed, doing anything but grabbing Felix’s face between hands cold from the outside and kissing him in one swift moment, before Felix can even realize what’s happening.

It’s quick. Felix is still shell-shocked when Dimitri pulls back, holding his hand twisted in the blanket to keep from touching his own lips. “What the _hell_ , Dimitri?” He repeats, voice pitched up at least three octaves.

“Sorry, I’m sorry—” Dimitri’s face is pale in the small shards of moonlight that peek through the window above the bed. He looks as surprised at himself as Felix is. “I had to do that, before I lost my courage.”

How nice it would be, to talk about it. _That was hardly a kiss_ , Felix might say, teasing in his way, pulling Dimitri down for another kiss, tasting him earnestly this time. _I thought I was the only one,_ Dimitri might respond, _for so long I thought I was the only one._ And most crucial of all, what Felix wishes he could say so badly, _I never hated you. Not for a day. Not even for a second._

A nice thought. 

When it comes – the end, that is, because it always, _always_ , comes – Felix is a bit dazed, lips parted and dry save for that small spot where Dimitri’s lips have just been. He’s about to say something, about to admit something, about to change everything.

A flash – silent but unmistakable, the light outside going brighter than sunlight, pouring in through rotted window frames left to disrepair, casting the planes of Dimitri’s shocked face into sharp relief.

“Felix,” Dimitri manages, but he sounds a continent away, his one eye wide and glassy as a marble.

The shock of magic must hit Felix first, because he feels nothing and then feels _everything_ – every pore sucked dry with a flash of fire until he can’t even scream, can’t do anything but slump over against the scratchy bed sheets, eyes dripping with tears and what he suspects is blood.

“Look—take me, leave him be, _please_.” It’s Dimitri, begging – that’s the only reason Felix knows there must be people entering the cabin. Dimitri is saying what Felix should be saying. He’s the shield, after all – isn’t he supposed to protect his king? His sworn allegiance?

But Dimitri is the one pleading, voice cracking under the pressure of his own voice, and Felix can’t even move his body, can’t see anything past the blood that pools in his eyes. Dimitri is pleading for a dead man.

Maybe it’s a small blessing that Felix goes before Dimitri, that he doesn’t see him carted away, kicking and screaming and fighting like the beast that he is. But he still wishes the end had come quicker, had done him in in a moment rather than across what feels like hours. It’s too much like this, too much to confront all they had and how easily it was torn down.

_Oh, dear. And you were doing so well, weren’t you?_

He must be dying. No time else does this voice visit him – haughty and childlike. Scolding him as if this is anything he can control, as if there aren’t one thousand, one million different ways this could go.

But maybe, in one of those realities, it goes like this: Felix kisses Dimitri back. Kisses him until that stupid, handsome, surprised face goes slack and warm, until they’re weeping not from pain but from pleasure, from the release of it. And at the end, they’re alive, alive and breathing into each other’s mouths and grinning again like fools. Maybe in one of those million timelines, that is their happy end, their soft landing – not this. Not violent end, after violent end, after violent end.

Ah, well. It was a nice dream, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**1 st of the Great Tree Moon, Imperial Year 1184**

Money is hard to come by, lately. The kid – Alex, maybe, or perhaps his name is Hector – scrounges for it where he can, picking up coins that spill from the open purses of careless nobles who hurry through the village. None of them ever stay, but they sometimes pay for goods with gold shavings; whichever merchant is blessed with the business will always parade around that night like a general with their spoils of war. The kid sometimes finds luck scurrying behind them, picking up scraps of bread and spare grapes they leave in their wake.

People are so careless with their money. And with their lives: it’s tempting to flaunt your good fortune, but draw too much attention around town and you’re sure to be targeted by bandits, desperate for a lucky break. The baker who just yesterday had his entire stock bought out by a gregarious, wealthy man with bright red hair is dead now, his pockets and body pilfered.

The kid finds easier ways to make some coin after that.

“Morning,” he approaches the shadow in the alley. If you look hard enough, it looks almost like a man. “Need a message delivered again today?”

A beat of silence. “Yes,” the shape finally rasps out. It reaches out a hand – the hand itself always looks surprisingly young. Some scars, some misshapen knuckles that probably healed wrong after a fight. But the skin itself looks springy with youth. “Can you find that man who visited town yesterday?”

“Huh?” The stranger usually has the kid deliver messages to the nearest Kingdom Army outpost. He dared to look inside once, but the words swim off the page – the kid never did learn to read that well. But he guesses they’re intelligence reports about Imperial troop movements or some other useful info. Why else would the Kingdom soldiers often have him send a message back, if it was just the ramblings of a mad man?

“The redheaded man, you mean?”

“No, the other one.”

The other one— “Oh! The sword guy!” The rich redhead had been accompanied by a man with a deep scowl who was carrying at least three swords. Bit excessive, honestly.

“Yes,” and now the man reaches out to hand the boy an envelope. “As soon as you can, please.”

“Sure.” It’ll be harder to track down these men, but it’s doable. “Will need a little extra, though.”

The man might nod – who knows, the boy can’t see his face – and he reaches his hand out again to press a bag of coins into the boy’s hand. It’s much heavier than usual. “Whatever you need.”

_Easy money_ , the boy thinks. But the letter sits heavy and insistent inside his breast pocket, and he can’t help but wonder where the man gets this money, week after week. How does he survive, living in the shadows of a half-dead village that’s already been ravaged by the war?

What’s he living for, anyway?

+

**9 th of the Great Tree Moon, Imperial Year 1184**

Fraldarius is running low on troops, and so Duke Fraldarius is forced to send his only son to do the Kingdom’s bidding in the skirmish near the Sreng border. Still, Felix and his troops may not be enough, so Rodrigue insists that Sylvain join him with his personal battalion, and to escort him to the border.

Felix is sure it must be to punish him.

Sylvan is good enough company, and doesn’t even ask twice when Felix turns down a trip to a brothel they pass. He settles for a bakery instead, buying everything sugary sweet that he knows Felix will hate, raining gold coins down on the unsuspecting merchant.

Life is like this now: traipsing endlessly back and forth between Kingdom territories, defending what they can from Imperial sympathizers and their troops. Three months in Galatea; four months in the outskirts of Fraldarius; a few weeks near the Leicester Alliance border. Felix’s life moves now at the behest of a war he never asked for.

And somewhere, somehow, Dimitri is still alive.

After the cabin, after the kiss, Felix wakes up screaming. The same day rolls out before him as always. Except – none of his classmates are there waiting for him in their agreed-upon meeting place. Felix wanders through the catacombs, alone, for what feels like hours, and everything feels unfamiliar and new: no notches on the wall left by Ashe, no sunken-in foot holds, no candlelight flashing around the corner. When he finally reaches Dedue’s cell, it’s already empty.

_The traitor is dead_ , Cornelia announces that evening. But there is no public execution. Only her word. And because the world keeps turning, because Felix wakes up the next day and time keeps moving forward – he knows she’s a liar. 

Rodrigue looks torn, approaching Felix with a face drawn and dark. _I was told the prince escaped, that his retainer was killed. But… I’m not sure. I’m just not sure._

Felix says nothing. 

“Sylvain, Felix! It’s been so long— _wow,_ nice beard Sylvain!” Alois greets them at the Kingdom army’s outpost, clapping each of them on the back with a bit more force than necessary. They haven’t seen him since Garreg Mach – four years now. Things must be bad if the Knights of Seiros are lending their strength. “Let’s get you settled, how about some—”

“No,” Felix waves off whatever inane thing Alois is about to suggest. “We should prepare immediately if Imperial troops are expected tomorrow.”

“Imperial troops are always a day away,” Sylvain sighs, cuffing Felix’s shoulder. “Can’t we at least eat first?”

Felix acquiesces, but it’s a quick meal. If Imperial troops really are arriving in the morning, they have to prepare for how best to use the new battalions. And never mind the contingency plans to make, the intelligence to analyze.

(War-making is more administrative than Felix ever knew.)

“We got this the other day,” one of the generals says when they meet. Some stuffed uniform from Rowe who is way too far from home to be looking so self-important. “Apparently the Imperial Army has sent reinforcements to boost the Sreng troops.”

“Wonderful,” Sylvain deadpans. There’s a table in the center of the makeshift war room, complete with a map and small, painted figures symbolizing troop deployments. Sylvain prods at them with his finger. “A proxy war, exactly what we need.”

“A what—” the Rowe general starts, but Felix cuts him off. No need for this guy to get insecure about how much smarter the supposed slacker Gautier son is than him.

“Who’s the intelligence from?”

Alois grimaces, metaphorically tugging on his collar. “That’s the problem. We’re not sure who... exactly. Which, well, I know that sounds like we’ve been chasing after nothing.”

Felix makes an indignant noise at the same moment Sylvain says, “Wonderful! Exciting!”

Pointing out all the stupid decisions the Kingdom generals make is one of Sylvain’s favorite pastimes, and Felix is on his way to joining him – except, once it’s explained, listening to this mysterious spy seems like the smartest thing to do. He delivers letters on a strict schedule, always in neat script. Most importantly, all his predictions seem to come to pass. He really is moving in the shadows, gathering reliable information. He seems legitimate, like someone they can trust, like—

“Dimitri.”

It’s Sylvain who says it, but Felix is a breath away, holding his stomach like he’s just been run through.

“Don’t—” The Rowe general scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. The prince is dead.”

They bicker, and they snap at each other, and conspiracy theories are traded like currency. It’s been this way since the war started, since Cornelia came out looking demure with her hands folded in front of her lap and told the world Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd was dead. And only Felix really knew better.

“He’s long dead,” another general chimes in. And another – “What good would he be, in a war like this?”

“He’s alive.” Felix’s voice rings like a bell, clear and sure and the murmuring around the table stills. Bile is rising in his throat. “Fuck all of you. Dimitri is alive, and you did _nothing_.”

All eyes swivel to Felix, stare at him as he shakes, so minutely that no one else would notice if they weren’t stuck in such close quarters. _He’s alive, he’s right here, what was I looking all this time for—_

And, when no one responds, those eyes watch Felix leave, chest heaving as he takes in the crisp mountain air, the calm of the night.

Sylvain is the one sent to follow him. Of course.

“I volunteered,” Sylvain offers as he approaches Felix, perched on an outcropping of rock overlooking the river that runs through the camp site. “So, no need to go easy on me.”

“I’m not angry.” _For once,_ Felix can imagine Sylvain thinking. “I’m tired of yelling. None of you will listen.”

“Listening is one thing. Believing is another.” Always the philosopher among them. Felix gets the hesitation, the skepticism. But he never signed up to make believers out of fools.

He buries his head into the fold of his arms. “He’s alive. If he wasn’t alive, we wouldn’t even be here. We would—this whole world would be gone.”

Sylvain wipes a hand down his face, “Goddess, Fe, I know you love the guy but—”

“It’s not just that!” Felix shouts and – oh. Not _just_ that. It’s the first time he’s ever said that out loud, said anything that might actually come close to admitting— “It’s something else. I can’t explain it in a way that would make any more sense.”

“Try, Felix. At least try.”

Felix is furious at how quickly the tears spring to his eyes. He _has_ been trying – looking for Dimitri around every dusty corner, on the edge of every battlefield. Years now he’s crisscrossed Faerghus, pushing as far as he could before it got suspicious, before Cornelia or Imperial spies or anyone else could figure out what he was doing. The only place Felix finds Dimitri is in his dreams.

“You have to trust me, then,” Felix worries his bottom lip between his teeth. “Just… don’t call me crazy.”

“Never, Fe.” And here is where Felix remembers that Sylvain never was one to doubt Felix, or Dimitri, or Ingrid, or any of them. Sylvain, who spent so much of his childhood pleading with his father to listen to him, who knelt before him, bruises scattered across his body. Sylvain, who would never call anyone else delusional, even if he started to believe he himself was.

Besides – this isn’t the first time Felix has told Sylvain all of this.

He nods the same as he did back then – _Goddess_ , it’s been years ago now, but even longer than that in Felix’s lived memories – and by the time Felix finishes his explanation, his voice is going small and quiet, like he knows how ridiculous he sounds. Like he’s a child making up excuses.

“Ah, okay.”

“Okay?” Felix repeats, deadpan. “I guess you have grown up. Last time you almost shit your pants.”

Sylvain’s eyebrows shoot up his face. “Last time? You mean you… have we had this exact conversation before? Am I part of this whole,” he waves his hand in circles in the air, “time loop disaster thing?”

“Everyone is,” Felix shrugs, pulling his legs up to his chest, circling his arms around them, propping his chin on his knees. “I only told you once, when I was really desperate. You taught me about entropy.”

“Sounds like me.” Sylvain mirrors his pose, both of them looking out on the horizon, the last bit of light slipping below the snow-crusted mountains. It’s stupid how cold it gets this far north. The rest of the Kingdom is sweltering, and yet as soon as you reach Gautier the landscape still looks barren as winter.

“Why didn’t you tell me all those other times too?”

Felix wants to applaud Sylvain for feigning casualness. It’s a valiant effort, but Felix can see the way his fingers are twitching, leg bouncing absentmindedly. Sylvain may be a good actor, but Felix has known him too long for that. “I can’t give you a good answer.”

“I’ll take a bad one.”

“Whatever,” Felix huffs out a laugh. “I thought—I figured there must be a reason only I remembered everything. I thought I had to do it alone.”

Really, Felix never considered an alternative.

“Typical Fraldarius,” Sylvain mumbles, a bit of fondness creeping into his voice. “But that’s stupid.”

“Okay, Gautier.” Felix turns to Sylvain, pins him with an accusatory stare. “Next time you wake up in an unending time loop, you can talk to me about what’s stupid and what’s not.”

Sylvain’s laugh is loud enough that the generals back at the tent can probably hear him. They probably think it’s all good, that Sylvain’s managed to talk sense into Felix, instead of Felix talking some nonsense into Sylvain. “How about,” Sylvain offers. “Next time we all die and you have to play Knight in Shining Armor for His Highness, you tell me about it. Right away. Let’s have this same conversation. And I promise I won’t call you crazy.”

“How are you so sure this isn’t it?” Felix counters. “What if I’m right, and Dimitri is alive?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s alive,” Sylvain unfolds himself, laying back now in the grass, propped up on his elbows. “With everything you’ve told me, I guess he must be, but, I dunno,” he frowns. “This doesn’t feel right. You ever get that feeling?”

_All the time. Every morning. Every time I wake up and another day has passed like nothing._

“Sometimes.”

“Then, let’s do it,” Sylvain sticks a hand out. “Let’s rescue him together this time—and Ingrid and Dedue, and everybody. No more lone wolf Fraldarius, okay?”

Felix takes a second to think. He’s never been one to make promises lightly. “Okay.”

They shake on it. And Sylvain, because he’s never been able to let a moment pass without a joke or rude remark, lets out a long whistle.

“Never been so excited to die before.”

+

Felix rides into battle so often it becomes a sort of ritual: wake up before dawn, sharpen his blade, warm up his magic, visit the healers to make sure none of his existing wounds are healing improperly. Wouldn’t do to have that old gash in his side suddenly spill open in the middle of combat. If Felix dies, it won’t be from his own negligence.

Sylvain’s routine is a bit different: wake up an hour before they leave, dismiss whatever healer or foot soldier he’s bedded the night prior, and groom his horse while his squires clean up his tent.

“You love this,” Felix scoffs as they watch the young boys scramble to pack up his belongings.

“Simple pleasures, Felix. Simple pleasures.” Sylvain winks, but Felix can see the deep bags under his eyes. He wonders the last time he actually slept.

Simple pleasures – Felix isn’t sure he’s ever had such a thing. Maybe cleaning his blade, seeing the impressive glint of a well-cared for weapon. Or when apples would be on sale in the market and he’d buy a whole bushel just to deliver to Annette, to see her smile and squeal.

_Or_ , Felix brain supplies, when Dimitri would wait in the weapons barracks all day just for one chance to spar with Felix; or when Flayn was on cooking duty and Dimitri would eat three time, four times as much as usual, cheeks stuff; or—

Or the look in Dimitri’s eyes right before he kissed Felix. Like he was a starving man who just spotted an oasis.

Maybe Felix’s life has become too complicated for simple pleasures.

They follow Alois out to the battlefield, where they’re meeting up with reinforcements from one of Gautier’s pledged houses, a battalion of armored knights that seems to be a boon to the spirits of the nervous and jittery troops.

The good spirits are short-lived. The second they reach the valley Felix sees Alois’ face fall.

The Sreng border is so close they can see it from here, the sharp mountain peaks capped with white. But in the valley below, a massive wall of knights stares down the Faerghan forces. Above their heads, fluttering wildly in the windy morning air, is the blood red flag of the Empire. Fog curls at the feet of their horses, looking like steam or smoke, like they’ve just risen from some unseen, hellish void.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a fair fight,” Sylvain mutters, eyes cold as he takes in the line of black and gold armor. “But you know how Edelgard is.” Meaning, they were supposed to be able to crush a border insurrection with ease; instead, they’ll be forced to suffer massive casualties.

Alois, always the optimist, waves at them, like he’s dispelling some negative cloud that lingers around them. “Lucky we anticipated this then, right?”

They did, and so they fall into place easily, even as the Sreng calvary starts to ride in. Sylvain’s battalion is the first to meet them, a clash like a cannon going off, the Lance of Ruin beaming even as red stains its edges. The foot soldiers run to meet them, and the noise of battle rises even as the number of people dwindles and the bodies start piling up.

Repetition breeds excellence. Routines breed excellence. Even if comes to resent it, Felix has to agree – it’s like clockwork to cut through the crowd, to lead his battalion into the heat of battle without any hesitation. And Felix’s killing edge is so sharpened and immaculate, the blood seems to slide right off, dripping onto the snow-soaked ground like so many tears.

Slice, cut, turn. Cut at the knees of a Sreng general’s horse; it’s a death sentence for them both. Felix absorbs the pommel of a sword to his gut, but it barely slows him down. One downward thrust of his sword and the man goes still, pinned to the ground by his cut throat. Slice, cut, turn. Survey the situation, find that royal blue banner to ensure you haven’t strayed too far. They’re deep in the valley now, but Felix sees that familiar shade of blue, a speck on the eastern hill – what the hell is someone doing up there? A lookout, maybe? Slice, cut, turn. Send a shock of Thoron into the Sreng armored battalion, watch them fall in a line. Check for that banner – still, up on the hill. But it’s lumbering now, moving in an almost inhuman way. The shape changes, nothing like a banner at all, some semblance of a man—

_Dimitri._

He feels it before he even catches sight of that flash of golden hair, a tremble that builds under his skin and leads him out of formation. _Interesting –_ and there’s that voice again, a haughty childlike thing. It’s been so long since he heard it, not since—

“Fuck— Get off!” Felix throws off a brawler and cuts across their chest, just deep enough to incapacitate them while his head whips around, searching for Sylvain. He’s not too far up ahead, maybe fifty meters or so, now separated from the rest of the cavalry. Never before has Felix been so glad that his friend is so easy to spot, the eerie glow of his weapon and his fire-red hair both, and he scrambles though the crowd, Aegis shield raised to shove off incoming attacks.

“Shit—Sylvain! Sylvain!” Felix stops just short, parrying a blow from a lance just a bit too slowly, and he pitches forward, hitting the flank of Sylvain’s black horse.

“What the—Felix, Goddess,” Sylvain sends a shot of fire magic at the swordmaster, leaning down so Felix can use his outstretched hand to hoist himself up off the ground. “What the hell?”

Felix’s throat feels like it’s closed up; he takes in a shaky breath, and there’s hardly a noise, only something that falls embarrassingly short of being called a squeak. Still, he steels himself, grips the Aegis shield with white knuckles, and breathes out, “Dimitri—it’s Dimitri.”

“You—” Sylvain dodges a shot of fire, and his horse bucks in fear even as he tries to soothe her. “Okay, alright—fuck, so what do you need?”

“Your horse, your horse,” Felix pulls at Sylvain to get him to climb down from the saddle. “I need to get there, Sylvain, _please_.”

_Please_ – Sylvain mouths the word, looking dumbfounded. When was the last time Felix ever asked him for something with a _please_ at the end? He slides off his horse and hands Felix the reins wordlessly, gives him a curt nod before turning back to battle.

Four years – it’s been four years since Felix woke up to news that Dimitri had escaped. Four years of searching for him, four years of seeing slivers of blue and yellow around cold stone corners. Four years – longer than the time they were at Garreg Mach by far; longer than the time between then and the Western Rebellion, longer than the time it took Felix to decide Dimitri was an irredeemable monster, to carve out that impassable canyon between them. Longer than the time it took to carefully build a bridge over that distance, to have Dimitri splashing him with water on an unseasonably warm day, to have him wild-eyed and flushed hovering above Felix’s face, wishing for more.

He kicks Sylvain’s horse into a cantor, and she goes easily, weaving through crowds of soldiers. He’s close now, close enough that if Felix yelled surely Dimitri would hear him. But the words are stuck in his throat, and the dewy grass of morning is now soaked with blood and the mud is slowing them down. _Dimitri—!_ It’s more of a wheeze than anything, and Felix grunts as he shoots off another round of Thoron, at the ground this time, and half a dozen soldiers go tumbling out of the way as the soil roils beneath their feet.

The path is clear now, just a half a hill’s climb. Felix almost falls on his face trying to get off Sylvain’s horse, and slaps at her flank to send her back; she’s well-trained enough that she’ll find her way back. Felix soldiers on foot now, spitting mad like a rabid animal. “Dimitri! Boar, _look_ at me!” There’s a twitch in the movement of that broad, blue shape. A recognition, Felix hopes.

But it’s not recognition. It’s killing intent.

A beast – that’s always what Dimitri becomes when he’s like this, when he’s seized in battle and there’s a weapon in his hands. He darts down the hill, into a crowd of black and gold. Areadbhar starts to glow with eerie violence, maybe sensing another relic nearby, maybe just feeding off of whatever new rot has taken root in Dimitri’s heart. He mows down a battalion of infantry, a new head rolling in the time it takes Felix to take each step forward, boots squelching in the muddy terrain.

“Dimitri!” He roars over the battle, over the sound of metal on metal. “ _Fuck_ —Dimitri, what are you doing?”

Laughing, it seems. Dimitri’s face turns toward Felix, that lone blue eye like a beacon calling him further into the tangle of battle. Felix raises his shield and barrels on, fixed on the way Dimitri dances across the grass with more grace and power than any beast could have. He must have lost his mind, must have gone mad.

But the strangest part is, he doesn’t look mad at all. He looks _happy_.

“Felix!” Dimitri is breathless by the time Felix reaches him, a wheezy kind of laughter punctuating his words. “Is this a bad time?”

“Is this—” Felix stutters, and his foot catches on a rotted bit of ground, and he stumbles forward, just barely missing the tip of an enemy spear. “What the fuck are you saying, boar?”

Only Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd could find a way to _pout_ in the middle of a battlefield. He swings a holy, centuries-old lance, cracks at least three skulls open, rolls the bodies away with a dismissive kick, and looks at Felix like a puppy who’s just been denied a treat. “Did you not receive my letter?”

“Did I—” Felix would give Dimitri an incredulous look if he wasn’t otherwise occupied beating off an overeager Imperial soldier. He looks too young to die; Felix cuts him down anyway. “What the hell are you talking about?”

The bodies fan out from where Dimitri stands, a morbid semi-circle. The remaining portion of the battalion is limping away, leaving with their lives only because Dimitri turns his attention to Felix instead, face going soft as dough even with blood splattered across his cheeks. He looks – remarkably clear-eyed, all the bloodthirsty intent melting away the second he looks over. “Felix, I’ve been looking for you. Did you read my letter?”

Felix sheaths his sword with a shaking hand. “No. Tell me yourself.”

_I was also looking for you. Every day, every hour, every second._ Felix bites his tongue till he tastes metal.

“Run away with me.”

The first time Dimitri asks this of Felix, they’re kids, caught up in the pressure of noble expectations and nursing grand dreams of lives as wandering heroes, dispensing justice across the land. It’s a sweet thing; Dimitri smiles so wide his eyes squint shut, even when Felix refuses him, calls him ridiculous.

The second time goes like this: Dimitri, soaked in blood, fingers white knuckled in Felix’s cloak, pulling him closer across a foggy battlefield.

How cruel of Dimitri to make Felix play the part of the level-headed one, the duty-bound fool. His father would be so proud. It makes him sick.

“And do _what_ exactly?” Felix’s face twists into a snarl. “In case you forgot, there’s a war on. And you’ve been, what?” Skulking around gathering half-baked troop movements?” The words are coming out in a rush, Felix’s voice pitching up an octave, trembling even as he scolds Dimitri because _he’s alive, he’s alive, I knew it, I knew he was_. “Didn’t you—did you think we wouldn’t notice? Or _care_ that you were gone?”

Annette had been the first to cry when the news came in about Dimitri’s supposed demise. It was immediate, like she’d just been run through with a spear, a kind of sick wail that Felix still hears sometimes in his nightmares. She clung to Ingrid, stony-faced as always, and to anyone watching it would have seemed like Felix was the one keeping them all together, calm and firm even as his hands clenched tight at his sides.

He wanted to break something back then; he wants to break something _right now_. First on the list: Dimitri’s stupid, handsome face, jaw peppered with stubble, hair long enough that it’s falling across his eye. His brows knit together, but he never loses that bemused smile. “You should really read my letter.”

“I’m not reading your stupid fucking letter!” Felix half-shrieks. He’ll blame it on the adrenaline instead of the infuriatingly unreadable look on Dimitri’s face. Without realizing it, they’ve been drifting together, like bits of debris on the ocean, and it’s a death wish to lose concentration on a battlefield like this, but Felix sinks into Dimitri’s stare regardless.

What a mess Dimitri makes of him, every time.

In the second before it happens, Felix’s head goes fuzzy, a dizzy kind of déjà vu that has the ground shifting beneath his feet, shuddering like a wave. Dimitri leans in – a half-promise from another time – and then throws him to the side, and Felix goes down hard against the wet ground.

In the second before it happens, Dimitri says something, a whisper of a whisper that Felix catches only because of their proximity. A promise that has Felix going cold all over, like his spine’s been turned to ice.

In the second before it happens – before Dimitri dies, again – he looks happy. Felix scrambles to his hands and knees and looks up, horrified, as a javelin that should have run him through ends up lodged in Dimitri’s chest instead. Look at that: a perfect shot.

“Dimitri—” Felix’s vision goes watery, the landscape waving before him, almost melting away as Dimitri crumples to the ground like a doll cut from its strings. The solider, apparently seeing that he’s just lanced the ultimate prize, is stuck paralyzed. Felix sends a parting shot of lightning to his head.

Not that it matters. Not that anything these past four years has mattered, now that Felix has Dimitri dying in his arms again, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“I’m so tired,” Felix says, though to who he’s not sure. He’s crying rivers – from anger, from fear of what come next, from the senselessness of it all.

Dimitri must not know any other way than to take Felix’s world upon his shoulders, to carry his heart so carefully, carefully as he now reaches up, cradling the side of Felix’s face. As if _he’s_ not the one dying, bleeding out into the mud and grime, onto the same battle-worn field where their ancestors had likely fought and died and fought and died for hundreds of years. 

So, in the end, hasn’t this all been repeating for millennia? Felix can’t be the first one to face this, to have his back broken over the wheel of time. It just feels like it.

He holds his face against Dimitri’s chest, and listens to his breath rattling in his lungs, until the world around them finally dissolves away.

_See you soon._

+

It’s a slaughter.

The boy’s never seen anything like this, and he gags on the smell, stepping over slain bodies and stained banners, red and blue both dark now with blood. It’s not really the blood or even the smell that bothers him the most – it’s the sheer scale of it, the way bodies litter the valley like broken dolls, discarded and forgotten. Who won? Did anyone?

At first, the boy checks the dead faces for the tell-tale frown of the man he’s searching for. But it becomes too ghastly to see their open eyes, glassy like marbles, their mouths open in some half-finished scream.

It was strange, wasn’t it, that the stranger gave all his payment up front?

The boy should have known, should have thought past the desire to make a quick bit of coin. It was common practice to give half the money upfront, the other half upon his return. But this time, the stranger had handed him a fat satchel of coins and sent him on his way. Either a suicide mission – or delivering a suicide note.

A small tent is pitched to the side of the field, with a torn Faerghus banner waving weakly in the wind. And next to the tent, a soldier with a familiar shade of hair.

“Hey! Hey, wait!” The boy flags him down, jumps over bodies and broken weapons, and sticks his hand out, wanting nothing more than to get the cursed letter out of his possession. Something about it feels all wrong. “I—I have a delivery, is your friend around?”

“My… friend?” The soldier blinks down at the boy. He must be a general, the boy thinks, or maybe some noble, because he’s holding a weapon that glows like his own personal sun. Something ancient, for sure; and yet, he goes and props it up against the tent like it’s nothing special.

“With the, you know—” the boy frowns and makes a movement like he’s slashing a sword.

“Oh, him!” The nobleman laughs, but it doesn’t reach his tired eyes. “He’s not around. I’ll take whatever you have for him.”

The boy hands over the letter eagerly, and the nobleman tears into it. “Sorry, mister, by the way,” the boy mumbles. And he really is sorry, sorry that anyone has to die like this. Sorry that anyone has to see it. He wonders if the man has friends out there, laying broken and empty.

“Bastards,” the man says, laughing darkly as he scans the letter.

The boy dances on his feet, wondering why he hasn’t dipped and run already. But he’s still scanning the battlefield, the triage set up outside the tent. There are two bodies positioned not far from them. Unlike the others, they’re covered with royal blue Faerghan flags, the outlines of their bodies still visible beneath the fine fabric. Must be somebody important.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” The man folds the letter up neatly, places it in his pocket, fixes his gaze on those two bodies. The boy doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone look so empty before. 

“It’s just that they were supposed to take me with them.”

+

_Dear Felix,_

_It’s difficult for me to find the words. I feel as though I’m losing a part of myself with each second. Do you ever feel like that, like something is missing within you?_

_No, I suppose not. You have always been so sure of yourself. This is just one of the reasons I care for you so. Sometimes, when we were younger, I envied you. More often, I was fascinated._

_I had a dream the other night, and upon waking I remembered something._

_Let me describe. And, once I find you, tell me if you remember too…_

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Felix wakes up. It’s the morning of the execution of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, former Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Faerghus, now a known traitor. At nightfall, he is to be beheaded before the Goddess and all his former subjects.

Birds are still singing, the streets are still bustling, the sun is still shining. And Felix looks the same. Except, now, that’s all wrong.

“You hungry?”

He makes it down the kitchen in a haze. Just mechanics burned into his body from time and time and time again of waking in up in that same drafty room. Felix’s stomach is rumbling, and the kitchen maid with the ruddy cheeks gives him a sweet smile and presses a savory pastry into his hand. “You look like skin and bones.”

Felix regards his own hands like they belong to someone else. They might as well. And, finally, he manages a meager _thank you._

Felix looks the same – the same as he had yesterday, the day he woke up in a tent on the way to Sreng, with Sylvain snoring obnoxiously beside him. The lines on his face, the bags under his eyes, the way his clothes have started to fall off his frame just a bit from too many nights of going to bed hungry on the road and too many days spent swinging a sword. Felix looks twenty-one when he should look nineteen, and no one seems to notice. Not his father, who gives him that same tight smile. Not the kitchen staff or the guards or any of the minor nobles milling around the courtyard looking for someone to gossip with.

_Keep moving –_ that’s all Felix can think, all he can do. Keep moving, let your instincts carry you. If he stops, if he lets his joints rust, he’s sure his body will rust over and break down.

But he has to stop, eventually, at the doorframe to their usual meeting room. It seems emptier than usual, just Sylvain and Ingrid looking down at the map between them with matching frowns. They look older, too – Sylvain with his winter beard and expanding shoulder span; Ingrid with her hair cut short and face sharp and thinned.

And standing beside them, this time, is Dedue.

“Felix? What’s wrong?”

Ingrid makes a move like she’s trying to check his temperature, pressing the back of her palm to Felix’s forehead. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

_I have_. Felix stumbles into the room, waving Ingrid off as she tries to steady him. His meet the other three pairs in turn, each watching him carefully.

_I saw you die; I saw you lose your mind; I saw you left behind on an empty battlefield._

Dedue is the one to break the silence. “Felix, it is a surprise, but I am glad to see you.”

Anger flares hot across Felix’s face, the same as it always is with Dedue, even after all this time. Even after seeing the man half-broken by Cornelia’s torture; even after dying at his side countless times. Felix still seethes looking at him and seeing Dimitri’s influence so plain in his mannerisms.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“H-Hey, don’t worry about it,” Sylvain steps between the two men with arms outstretched, nervous smile on his face. “We’re all here now, right? We have more important things to worry about.”

“No, we have time.” Felix grips Sylvain’s forearm pushing him out of the way, stepping into Dedue’s space, even as Sylvain’s other arm remains propped between them. But Felix is the only one among them for whom that’s true – he can take all the time he wants to settle petty grievances. And this one has been left to fester too long.

Everything comes out in the wash, a fresh start each morning.

Felix and Dedue don’t get along. It’s an unwritten truth that their friends and classmates and professors come to understand. Most mistake it for Felix’s rage and Dedue’s jealousy. How generous an interpretation that is for Felix, even as the truth is quite the opposite: Felix seethes at the sight of someone else at Dimitri’s right side, someone encouraging him instead of peeling back that façade to reveal the boorish truth underneath. And Dedue can take the poison-tipped words, the misguided anger; but he can’t abide Felix’s cruelty, not toward Dimitri. He puts himself between the two as a shield, a protection, and regards Felix with something unspoken that makes Felix’s blood boil.

Not rage; indifference.

“Whatever you think of me, I don’t give a shit.” An easy lie. “I’m here for Dimitri, not you. You have—” Felix swallows, remembering his promise to Sylvain, to not leave them all in the dark again. “You have no clue what I’d do to save him. Anything.”

“Felix…” It’s Sylvain, lowering his arm, the final barrier between Felix and Dedue gone.

But Dedue’s eyes don’t yet soften. “You really believe you would do anything to save him?”

“You don’t believe me?” Felix spits, hand whipping out to grip the scarf around Dedue’s neck, pulling his head down into Felix’s space. “Is this your way of _testing_ me?”

“Why would I be the arbiter of such a test?” Dedue answers, coolly. “I’m only asking a question.”

“Tch,” Felix releases Dedue’s scarf, pushing him back and turning back to the other half of the room, ignoring Ingrid and Sylvain’s pained faces. “Believe what you want.”

His hands are curling and uncurling at his sides, breathing coming in small huffs. Felix has never been good at calming his mind. Not like Sylvain, who can snap from turmoil to that sunny façade in a second. Not like Ingrid, who can push down all her grief the second she steps onto the battlefield.

Not like Dedue, who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Dimitri and never _once_ flinch.

“I believe you,” Dedue says, in that quiet rumble of his. Felix has heard him speak to the plants in the greenhouse in such the same way; a calming balm of a voice. “I believe you will do anything for His Highness. I only ask if _you_ believe that. If you’ve come to—” He stutters, uncharacteristic, and when Felix turns back, Dedue is smiling. “If you’ve come to understand your feelings, then I’m pleased.”

Felix blinks once, twice; he steps forward, and it’s a strange gesture but the only one he can think of, to knock a fist against Dedue’s breastplate.

_I don’t think I did believe it_ , he wants to say, to admit. If hadn’t been forced to test the limits of those feelings, what would they be?

“I have—hm,” Felix didn’t practice how to start this, too waylaid by the way his friends look, still grown and scarred from battles that haven’t even taken place yet. “Maybe sit down. I have something to say.”

“Now this,” Sylvain says, a glint of recognition flashing in his eye, “I gotta hear.”

+

Nothing around Felix is normal. And still, the new normal establishes itself.

It’s only the five of them now – him, Dedue, Sylvain, Ingrid. He tells them the truth, and every morning they react much the same: Sylvain believes him instantly, then Dedue, and finally Ingrid, after much goading from the other three. Felix tests this new universe, leaving small marks in the rock walls of their hideout. And every morning, they remain. A convenient way to prove his case, even as the others seem to remain blind to the more obvious changes in their appearances – Ingrid’s shorn hair, Sylvain’s beard, Dedue’s scars, the dark bags under Felix’s eyes.

And Dimitri—

He looks the same as out on that battlefield, as he had with that cold hand cradling Felix’s face.

“I’m going alone.”

“You’re not,” Felix insists, strapping an extra pack onto the flank of Dimitri’s horse. “Dedue is going with you.”

This argument, too, starts to establish itself. Felix runs over it like any other well-worn path. _You can’t go alone; it’s too dangerous; you need to stay alive._ Once, Felix even pleads: “I need you to stay alive Dimitri.”

Dimitri swallows, and Felix watches his bottom lip wobble, ever so slightly. “You mean Faerghus needs me.”

“No.” A quiet whisper of an admission. “I mean me.”

“Then, I’ll live.” Dimitri responds, his voice falling even quieter than Felix’s. It’s a miracle they can hear each other; it’s a miracle they’re speaking at all. It’s always been like this – some language only the two of them can understand.

_See you soon._

And Felix does – see Dimitri again, that is, the very next morning. And the next, and the next. The escape attempts get easier and easier, in no small part due to the fact that Felix is no longer _alone_ in this, no longer the only one witness to all the small tics and changes of every repeated time loop. Some days, Felix even wonders if the others are starting to remember each turn on their own.

But the result is the same: Dimitri escapes Fhirdiad, often with Dedue by his side. And the next morning, Felix wakes up in the same bed, on the same morning, listening to the same birdsong outside his window. It starts to sound like a funeral dirge.

“I’m going with him.”

Felix announces this at the worst possible time – with the horses already saddled up, bodies of half a dozen of Cornelia’s mages scattered around them, and a wound on Ingrid’s shoulder that demands immediate attention.

Sylvain grips the reins tight, pulling the horses a bit away from Felix. “Absolutely not.”

“What?!” Felix snaps, scrambling for the reins, but Dimitri holds him back, one massive arm laid in front of Felix’s chest. Felix’s finger catches on one loop of leather, wrenching the reins from Sylvain, and the horse whinnies in confusion, bucking away. “Sylvain what is your _problem?_ We have to try _something_ new, or—”

He falters when Dimitri looks at him with that massive glassy eye. “Or what? What’s going on with you two?”

“You’re— _shit_ ,” Ingrid hisses, blood pooling between her fingers. Dedue is wrapping her shoulder with careful movements, but she’s making it difficult, holding the wound like she can clamp it shut with her fingers. “This is not the time!”

It’s been a dozen or so times, now; a dozen more failed attempts under Felix’s belt. And even if their memories don’t fully return, his friends start the feel the strain, a well-worn rope connecting them all, pulled taut, ready to snap. It feels like old times, like Felix and Sylvain bickering at Garreg Mach; like times that haven’t happened yet. Or, rather, that _won’t_ happen now, at least not the same way – hiding out in in makeshift war room tents, arguing about troop movements until dawn.

“You’re acting like you’re the only one who gives a shit!” This is Sylvain’s new refrain. Felix doesn’t bother telling him this isn’t the first time he’s said it.

“I never said that.”

“I didn’t say you _said_ it, I said you _acted_ like it.”

“Sylvain!”

“Please, both of you,” Dimitri says, and his hand is curling against the leather strap of Felix’s armor, subconsciously pulling him closer. “We don’t have time for this.”

Sylvain laughs, something dark and humorless. “Oh, Felix has all the time in the world to waste. Isn’t that right? We can fuck up over and over, and he’ll be fresh as a daisy.”

“Sylvain…” Ingrid winces. “That’s not fair.”

It should be Felix who’s angry. This was all supposed to make things _easier_. It was supposed to save Dimitri. It was supposed to be the magic missing piece. Isn’t that how these stories always go, all the fables and war stories Rodrigue would soothe Felix with before bed? Place your trust in your friends, in your comrades-in-arms, and all will be well.

What a load of shit.

“Then _you_ go,” Felix spits, tossing the reins at Sylvain; he snatches them out of the air.

“Felix,” Dedue’s voice cuts through the tension, even as Sylvain and Felix remain with eyes locked on each other. “Why don’t we don’t we tell His Highness the truth.”

“Tell—” Felix splutters, almost laughs, knocked out of his anger. “ _What?”_

“It’s not a ridiculous idea,” Ingrid says.

Dimitri’s hand pulls away from Felix’s chest, and he steps away, voice wobbly when he asks, “Tell me what?”

_You can’t._ The voice in Felix’s mind rings clear as a bell. _You know what will happen._

But he _doesn’t_ – he doesn’t know what these failures mean, what happens when the bodies stacking up in his wake topple over to swallow him whole. Repetition is supposed to breed excellence; Felix is supposed to become sharper with each iteration, like a blade run over a whetstone, over and over until the surface is gleaming and deadly-sharp. But that gleam never comes; instead, Felix feels himself rusting in place as the days drag on, rooted to one spot. He’s running through mud, and every time Dimitri dies it feels like a small part of him slips away forever.

Dedue’s hand folds over Dimitri’s shoulder, and Dimitri leans into his touch. “Your Highness, you should go. Felix will—” Dedue meets Felix’s eyes, amber meets topaz. “He will protect you.”

“Dedue you—And Felix—” Dimitri opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, waiting for the words to come. He could command them to tell him, and Felix can tell from the quirk of his brow that he wants so desperately to pull that trump card. He so rarely does. But he also looks so _tired_ , so beaten-down.

“It’s fine,” Ingrid stumbles over, falling against Sylvain’s side to steady herself. “Tell him, Felix. We need—it’s _something_ , isn’t? Just… get out of here first.”

Dedue slings their packs over the horses’ backs, clips the saddles on while Ingrid directs him. Dimitri, despite the circumstances, looks happy to see them getting along for his sake.

“Felix,” Sylvain calls as they mount the horses. “You realize why it’s just you, right? All the rest of us… I mean, they’re still there, you know?”

Felix’s voice is tight. “I know.”

“Okay,” Sylvain chews on his bottom lip, looking between Dimitri and Felix. Ingrid is staggered against his side, and he curls an arm around her, propping her up. “Okay,” he repeats.

None of this is okay. Felix wakes up every morning wanting to scream, wanting to shatter every mirror he sees, every reminder that he’s still here, that it’s _him_. He wants to strangle Cornelia’s thugs with his bare hands, let their blood run through the gaps in his fingers. He never wants to see his friends die again, those blank, lifeless looks paralyzing their faces. He wants to grab Dimitri and kiss him until he sees stars, until the rest of the world sinks away – into blissful emptiness this time, instead of that oppressive, deadly black void.

Felix wants a lot of things.

“Thank you. I can’t say enough…” Dimitri turns to face their small gathering, takes a deep breath, reaching for Felix’s hand. And without thinking, Felix reaches back, letting Dimitri squeeze it once, then drop it. “You saved my life. I—I promise I will not let you all down.”

“You never could, Your Highness,” Dedue says.

Felix is not quite so elegant as he grips the reins, blinking down at the only other people who know his secret. “See you,” he says, by way of a good bye.

Sylvain’s face is crumpled with resignation. “You won’t.”

They ride out past the castle walls, past the arrows that whiz around them, past the dense tree line that Felix once considered to be freedom. Felix is supposed to lead them somewhere, to the cabin, maybe, or another safe hideout. But Dimitri spurs his horse on, confident, and Felix falls in line. It feels natural, like this. Dimitri was always so much better on horseback.

“You’re cold,” Dimitri says when they stop to make camp. It hasn’t been that long – they really did lose time, bickering in the stables. The weather is just turning, but Faerghus men are supposed to be able to stand the cold. Felix always has.

“I’m not,” Felix says, swatting Dimitri’s hand away from where he’s pressed it against Felix’s forehead to feel his temperature. Dimitri pulls away slowly, letting his fingertips dance across Felix’s hairline.

“Go to bed,” Felix mumbles, at the same moment Dimitri says, “You’re getting sick.”

“I—I am not.”

Dimitri places another log on the fire, prodding it into the ashes with a stick. “You are. You should ride with me tomorrow. Although, we’ll have to leave one of the horses behind.”

Felix pulls his legs up to his chest, burying his face in his knees. This is _not_ happening. After everything – of course something stupid is going to happen like Felix dying in the middle of the forest because he has a _cold_. “I’m not doing that.”

“Then…” Dimitri frowns, holding out his arms. “Can I?”

Felix has no idea what Dimitri means, so he just shrugs. But a second later, Dimitri is sitting down behind him, wrapping his massive cloak around them both, arms pulling Felix tight in against him, chest to back.

“Are you fucking—” Felix squirms, not unlike the monastery cats that used to have to wriggle out of Dimitri’s over-eager grasp. Unlike those cats, Felix isn’t having much luck, his body already worn from fatigue and confusion.

Besides, the Blaiddyd grip isn’t so easily broken. “Just—It’s fine, like this, right? I don’t want you getting ill, Felix, please.” Dimitri rests his head on top of Felix’s, both of them watching the fire dance. The flames lick in and out of existence. It’s only because he doesn’t want to spend the entirety of tomorrow clinging to Dimitri’s back on horseback, and because he seems to fit so perfectly into the space of Dimitri’s chest, and because he _is_ a bit chilly – that Felix finally relaxes, pouting as he lets himself sink into Dimitri’s warmth.

It’s getting harder and harder to reconcile all the different Dimitris living in Felix’s mind. A charming young prince; a cruel monster on a battlefield; a broken, blood-soaked man; a desperate, tortured animal; a future king wrestling the ghosts in his mind – Felix watches each one die. And still, Dimitri stands.

Stubborn bastard.

“I guess I can be,” Dimitri says, laugh rumbling against Felix’s back. _Ah_ , Felix accidentally said that last part out loud.

“Go ahead ask,” Felix mumbles after a tense pause. “I’ll tell you the truth, if you want it.”

“Will it change anything?”

“I…” _I don’t know. I hope so. I want it to. I want it to change everything._

He’s falling asleep. Or maybe he really is getting sick, head fuzzy and unfocused. He wants to start at the beginning, the very beginning. When Dimitri was shiny and new and Glenn was watching them spar with that wry smile; when the biggest thing to worry about was sneaking a pastry from the kitchen after dinner. But it’s so hard to remember that now, the memories tarnished in his mind. How many years has Felix lived, through this one day alone?

“We lived out here, once,” Felix says, instead of explaining. “A cabin, actually. And you caught fish and I made horrible stews. You made a table, I remember.” His words are slurring together now, but he can feel Dimitri nodding, and so he continues. “I was—we were happy, I think. And you kissed me, but I can’t remember what it felt like.”

“Oh?”

“Shut up,” Felix wheezes out a laugh. “It was fine.”

“Tell me more in the morning,” Dimitri says, voice tight and hoarse, like he’s trying not to cry. He squeezes Felix that small, impossible bit tighter. “I want to hear everything.”

Felix’s eyelids are so heavy now, and he lets them fall shut, head resting against Dimitri’s arm. He smells like grease and dirt and pine. He smells like home.

The flames are fading now, the dance slowing to a waltz. Just two flames, feeding each other until they both burn out.

+

_Didn’t I say?_

_I warned you what would happen._

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Felix wakes up. It’s the morning of the execution of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, former Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Faerghus, now a known traitor. At nightfall, he is to be beheaded before the Goddess and all his former subjects.

And for the first time Felix thinks: let it happen. Let the executioner’s blade fall. It’s the easiest way, isn’t it? More humane than freezing to death in the middle of the night; than being dragged from bed by nameless, faceless mages; than living four years alone waiting for that familiar specter around every corner.

Felix would give anything to trade places with Dimitri right now.

There’s no balcony in his room, but there is a parapet, reachable through a small window. Felix claws at it, scratches through the rusted-over lock with bloody fingernails, and climbs through. Bare feet hit the jagged stone and Felix lets out a shuddering exhale. And then, breathes in.

“What the hell do you _want_ from me?!”

No answers. “I did everything right, _everything!_ I did everything you wanted!!” He’s screaming now, wailing like a dying animal. “I was supposed to—he was supposed to—” Felix’s throat is raw, eyes swollen and blurry, knees wobbling on the unsteady overhang.

He unstraps the dagger from his hip, holding it up to the morning sun to let the light glint off that finely-sharpened blade. If he plunged this into his neck, would it all be over? If he stepped off the balcony, if he laid broken and splattered on the cobblestone below, would a new morning still come?

Felix steps forward, until his toes dip over the edge, and he tilts his head up toward the sun, toward that impossible Goddess. “I saved him,” he whispers now, voice hoarse. “I saved him and you still killed him.”

_Well._

_What does it mean to save him?_

Now Felix realizes what Sylvain’s cruel words truly meant. He was right. All the failed attempts, all the dead bodies littering Felix’s mind, all the memories supposedly wiped clean – there was never any clean slate to begin with. Only a new universe, a new timeline. All those bodies left behind stay that way, dead and gone. And Felix moves on, alone. 

Even Dimitri—how many times had Felix killed him by now?

A gust of wind whips Felix’s hair around his face, loose sleep shirt fluttering, and Felix finally steps off the edge. He climbs back in through the window, locks the door, curls up in bed, and even as he tries, sleep never comes.

He’s never heard it so clearly before – the bells, the conflicted roar of the crowed as Dimitri is beheaded.

Felix wouldn’t call it a lullaby, but he falls asleep to it all the same.

+

Days come and go like this now: Felix, alone.

Rodrigue never comes to wake him. Which seems odd, until Felix explores the castle and talks to a few guards and finds that they have no idea who he’s talking about. The name _Rodrigue_ doesn’t spark any familiarity in any of the soldiers’ eyes, even the ones they brought from Fraldarius.

The hideout is empty, at first. Then, only Dedue. Then, only Ingrid. 

One time, it’s Annette, and Felix almost cries seeing her again after what feels like a lifetime – but her voice is all wrong, crisp and too-cheerful, like she’s forgotten what they came here for. _Professor wants me to join choir practice,_ she asks, and her pupils are blown like she’s been sitting in a dark room too long. _What do you think?_

It’s too much to watch her move, strange and doll-like, so Felix leaves in a hurry.

After that, he doesn’t visit the hideout.

Skulking around the castle will do, like a ghost left over from another era. There are so many _mirrors_ around the castle, is the thing. Felix hits one with the pommel of his dagger, just to see the satisfying way it cracks, spiderwebs dancing across his face. He makes it around the full floor, shattering each mirror in turn, before one of the guards catches him.

But the guards – were they always so short-staffed? The servants too. Felix finds the kitchens half-empty; the next day, even emptier, until it’s just one cook handing him crusts of bread, her face placid and rosy-cheeked. She pulls fresh loaves out of the oven, and each one is molded over.

No one is there to block Felix from leaving the city limits, so he rides out. No rest, no food, just an unforgiving cantor toward Fraldarius. Just to see how far he can make it.

(Not very far.)

He tries the forest, tries to find that old cabin, that sliver of safe space. But he barely makes it halfway into the depths of the Blaiddyd forest before he feels the darkness start to swallow him.

Fhirdiad is a prison, same as the cell Dimitri rots in in its underbelly. The capital slowly quiets – crowds thin, people seem to disappear, and the fewer obstacles between Felix and Dimitri there are, the further away he feels.

Felix promised – years and years ago now – that he would never die for Dimitri. Not like his brother, not like his father so obviously wanted to do. But he breaks that promise again, and again, and again. And there are no gravestones to sling around his neck, no ghosts to haunt him other than his own.

_You won’t go to him?_

The voice is louder now that the rest of Fhirdiad has become quiet. The childlike quality is still there, but another, more familiar voice layers on top of it. It almost sounds like the professor, that same tone of voice they’d use when admonishing Felix for spacing out during authority seminars.

“I can’t.” Felix is out on the parapet again, legs dangling off the edge, taking in the marble swirl of sunset. It’s almost time.

_But he will die._

“That’s no guarantee.”

_He has died so many times._

“Exactly.”

Talking to the – spirit, Goddess, devil, whatever it is – out loud isn’t necessary. But Felix takes to it anyway; otherwise, his voice would go unused.

No response. It’s waiting for an explanation.

“He’s died so many times,” Felix repeats, and his breath starts to curl like smoke in the cold night air. “And it never makes a difference.” _And I’m scared_ , Felix wants to say. Scared like he hasn’t been since he was four years-old and accidentally broke Glenn’s favorite training sword; since he was fifteen, watching Dimitri hobble back from the Western Rebellion so blood-soaked they had to cut off all his hair; since he was nineteen, watching Dimitri die for the first time, thinking it was the last.

_What are you afraid of?_

Felix laughs under his breath. “Fuck you. Stay out of my head.”

_Just a question._

Felix isn’t scared of Dimitri, he never was. He was scared of the beast that wore his skin, that used his voice and had his eyes. That fear chills with time, with proximity. The beast that roars at Felix to cut his throat is the same man that lunges in front of a lance to save his life; who makes a rickety table; who cups his face and looks him like hung the moon and all the stars. Instead of sharpening, that line between beast and prince thins. Until it might as well not be there at all. 

If Dimitri serves the dead, Felix serves the soon-to-be dead. And isn’t that what he’s frightened of?

_Interesting._

Felix swats at the air, as if that could chase away the voices in his head – one more thing he has in common with Dimitri, now – and he launches himself up off the parapet, back into his room, down the empty stairwell to the castle gardens. He’s forgotten to put his boots back on, and gravel and dirt crunches under his feet as he runs toward the main square, drawn like some otherworldly body to the sun.

The crowd is small, it’s shrinking every day. But still, two dozen or so onlookers gasp as Felix bursts into the square, pulling his sword and leveling it at the nearest cluster of soldiers, stationed at the edge of the crowd to keep them from the stairs leading up to the landing where the execution will take place.

“Put your swords down. I don’t want to fight you.” Felix lies, and the lies come easily after so much practice. He wants to fight, can feel the urge itching up his spine, the way he starts to feel too big for his body, aching for the clash of metal on metal.

An armored guard hikes up his axe, prepares that deadly swing, and Felix darts to his left, cutting behind his knee, the soft spot the man’s armor can’t reach. He topples noisily, and Felix digs his sword into the back of the man’s throat to stop his twitching. Blood pools beneath the body as the life twitches from his limbs.

_Go away. Just looking at your face makes me want to retch._

“Felix?! Felix, stop this—”

He doesn’t want to look, to see Dimitri shackled and begging for Felix to give up on him.

“I told you,” Felix repeats, voice shaking as he stares down another soldier. His blade is dripping red already. “I don’t want to fight.”

An unconvincing argument. Two swordsmen charge at him; Felix parries one blow, bends backwards to dodge the other’s blade. _Hah_ , he thinks, humorless. _All that dancer practice was useful after all._

A flare of Thunder in his palm blinds the first swordsman, distracting him enough for Felix to take the other down with a strike to the flank. He pulls his dagger from his hip and throws it at the first as he staggers back to his feet; it lodges firm in his neck, and he crumples to the ground.

Repetition breeds excellence. Felix holds a sword before he can hold himself up on his own two feet. He trains to improve, to grow stronger, for fun, to forget. It’s easy to wield a blade.

And, sometimes, easy to forget what that means.

Felix mows down another wave of foot soldiers, the horrified screams of the crowd a rush of noise in his ear, drowning out Dimitri’s cries. The rush of blood in his ear is too loud, the curve of his blade moving like it has a mind of its own. And Felix realizes he’s smiling – _laughing_ , even.

_Your face, that expression. All the world’s evil packed into it._

This won’t save Dimitri. But it might save Felix.

_You’re serving your own ego._

And worse – it feels _good_.

“Felix!” Dimitri breaks free, and his roar doesn’t stop Felix, but the iron-grip of his hand does, closing around Felix’s upper arm, pushing him off balance. “Felix, stop this!”

“Are you—” Felix blinks. He has to wipe his eyes to see, and he can feel the smear of red across his face as he does. “Are _you_ out of everyone telling me to stop?! You boar, you would—you _have_ killed like this and—”

Felix stumbles, lightheaded from the lack of oxygen and bone-tired. The scene around him is grisly.

“Felix… What did you do?” The look on Dimitri’s face is unreadable at first, but familiar. Familiar in the way people used to look at Dimitri after that fateful night in the holy tomb, after Edelgard declared war, after rumors of Dimitri’s break reached even the most clueless of students. 

Ah, that’s it. It’s pity.

“Don’t—don’t look at me like that,” Felix tries to push Dimitri away, but his free hand gets tangled in his cape, and his sword goes clattering to the ground. Dimitri holds him by both his shoulders, tight enough to bruise. Felix chokes down a sob. “I don’t—Dimitri—”

“I know, I _know_ ,” Dimitri is surrounding him, holding Felix’s shaking frame against his chest, letting their breathing harmonize. “I have you, Felix. I won’t let go.”

“You will,” Felix mumbles, shaking his head against the soft linen of Dimitri’s shirt, breath coming in hot, quick pants. “You will, you will. And I can’t—I can’t stop you.” He wants to cry – for the first time in years he _wants_ to cry – but the tears stay stubbornly caught in his lashes, refusing to fall. And Felix can’t stop the trembling even as Dimitri holds him closer, wraps his arms around Felix’s torso, holds those warm, strong hands against the small of his back, soothing up and down.

“I won’t,” Dimitri repeats, firm. His hand moves up, cradling the back of Felix’s head, hiding from his vision the small cluster of castle guards finally making their way to them through the maze of carnage Felix has left behind. Coming for them. “I’ll always come back.”

But Fhirdiad is crumbling. Everything is falling apart.

Even Felix.

+

**14 th of the Ethereal Moon, Imperial Year 1180**

“Don’t. Say. Anything.”

Dimitri, as if he had any other choice with the sharpened point of a blade aimed at his throat, nods and makes a movement with his hand as if to lock his mouth and throw away the key. It is, like with most things Dimitri does, furiously charming. Felix pulls his sword back with a sigh, duking his head to hide the bit of pink blooming across his face.

The jingle of the jewelry decorating the dancer costume is its own special kind of humiliating.

“Whatever,” Felix decides, turning away with a swish of fabric. _Goddess,_ this is mortifying. Mortifying enough to have to actually practice the clumsy dancing Byleth taught him – Felix may be many things, but he’s competitive first and foremost – but it’s a new layer of embarrassment to have Dimitri stumble into the training grounds as he does, red-faced and wide-eyed.

“Felix, you—” Dimitri reaches out, fingers grasping for Felix’s shoulder, but all his get is gossamer. Felix wriggles out of his grip with a step to the right, and he’s about to share some choice words with Dimitri when—

_Rrrrrriiippp!!_

“Oh,” Dimitri blinks, looking down at the long slip of white fabric in his hands, the delicate fabric already starting to fray. And looking up, the now-exposed skin of Felix’s shoulder, the loose fabric of his shirt falling down to reveal half his chest, the light brown of his areola— “I-I apologize Felix, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you didn’t _mean_ to,” Felix snaps, snatching the fabric from Dimitri’s palm. “Typical boar that can’t control its strength.” Anger starts to boil in Felix’s chest, and he pushes at Dimitri’s shoulder, shoving him away. “We have to return these, you know, if you don’t win!”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll win, Felix,” Dimitri says, and upon seeing the way Felix’s eyes start to bug out of his head, quickly amends his statement. “I-I can fix it.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll ask Mercedes.”

“No, please,” Dimitri steps in front of Felix as he starts for the door again. Since when did the boar get so tall? Felix instinctively cranes his neck to catch his eye. “Please, let me. I’d like to make it right.”

This is how Felix winds up in Dimitri’s room. It’s the first time he’s seen it since they came to Garreg Mach, and even if the room itself may only be a few feet from his own, may have the exact same layout, virtually the same furniture – it feels like a completely different world.

Felix is still in the dancer’s costume – what’s intact of it, anyway. The skirts are fine, as is the sash that runs across his left shoulder. It’s just the white top that needs mending, and so Felix shucks it off without much fanfare, and shoves it into Dimitri’s chest before retreating to the furthest corner of his room possible, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, legs tucked up to his chest.

“Just, um—it may be a minute,” Dimitri sets the shirt out on his desk. It’s pristinely organized, of course. “Do you want to sit on the bed?”

“No.”

Dimitri doesn’t push the issue. He doesn’t even make any small talk, just takes off his jacket and rolls up his sleeves so he can get to work, focusing on the mending with the same red-hot intensity he approaches everything with. Felix isn’t sure Dimitri knows any other way.

He still pokes his tongue out between his teeth when he’s concentrating, just like when they were kids.

“Hm,” Felix hums, picking at the edges of his skirt. “Don’t fuck it up too much.”

“Promise.”

Felix stifles a yawn. “And don’t take too long.” Never mind the fact that Felix’s room is _right there_ , and that he could always wait there for Dimitri to be done, rather than blinking sleepily in his overly-stuffy room, listening to Dimitri curse under his breath every time he snaps a sewing needle. There’s a small pile of them collecting already.

“I meant to say, earlier,” Dimitri ducks his head, but Felix still catches sight of the red tips of his ears. “You looked good. I mean—your practice is paying off. I look forward to your win.”

Felix just arches an eyebrow.

“I just—” Dimitri laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “It will be great to have a dancer in the class.”

“Sure,” Felix scoffs. “It’s fine. I’m going to lose anyway.”

“Felix, don’t say that, it’s not like you.”

“How would you know what I’m like?” Felix says, but he’s too tired to put too much venom behind it. “I’m not lying, Dorothea’s going to win. At least I’ll get Shamir’s vote, but Manuela’s always—”

Wait. How did he know that?

But it’s clear as day in his mind, like a memory already formed. Dorothea is beautiful and graceful as she dances; the only person Felix really manages to mesmerize is Dimitri, who watches Felix move with singular concentration, tongue darting out to wet his lips. _Almost had ‘em, Felix!_ Sylvain will say, clapping Felix on the shoulder. And then the strap of his shirt, messily sewn together, will fall—

“Felix?”

“Huh?” Felix wipes a hand down his face. “Forget it, forget I said anything.”

Dimitri makes a small rumbling noise, like he wants to prod Felix further. But he returns to his mending. “You should get more sleep, Felix. You work yourself too hard.”

“Look who’s talking,” Felix snorts. “Shut up and sew.”

Dimitri does _not_ shut up. “I suppose you have a point. But as a future ruler… I should become accustomed to sleepless nights, I think.”

Felix closes his eyes, leans his head back against the door. “The only thing you need to become accustomed to is actually listening to me for once.” He can sense the eager, puppy-dog look Dimitri is giving him, without even cracking an eye open. “Don’t read too much into that, boar.”

“Of course not,” Dimitri says, with the voice of a man who will probably bring those exact words up to Felix the next time he mutters something about _never serving as the boar’s right hand_.

Old habits and centuries of familial duty die hard, Felix thinks. And childhood crushes that never quite went away die even harder.

“What do you think?”

Dimitri holds the mended top out for Felix’s inspection, the fabric pinched as delicately as possible between his fingers. Felix wobbles to his feet, still sleepy and a bit woozy from the strange sense of déjà vu.

“Passable,” he announces, pulling the shirt from Dimitri and trying it on. The stiches are messy, blue thread zig-zagging across the pristine white. But it’s holding together.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from you,” Dimitri decides, smiling so wide his eyes crinkle shut, in the way that Felix pretends doesn’t make his stomach flip.

“You don’t get a compliment when you were the one who ripped it in the first place,” Felix says, turning away quick on his heel. He’s always doing that, turning from Dimitri to hide the color on his cheeks, or the rare upward twitch of his lips at one of Dimitri’s more groan-inducing jokes. 

How long has he been doing this now? Years, sure. But it feels longer than that.

For a second, Felix pushes down the urge, and turns back to Dimitri, hands clenched in the soft silks of his dancer’s skirt. “Thank you. Dimitri.”

He rushes out of the room too quickly to see Dimitri’s face, or hear his response – but Felix is sure he catches something that sounds like _good luck_.

+

_Look what you did._

_I can’t tell if you’ve broken it or fixed it._

+

**15vj qh vjg Yaxgtp Oqqp, Korgtkcn Agct 1181**

_Jgnnq?_ Quiet, at first. _K fqp'v ycpv vq dg cnqpg, rngcug._

Goddess, Felix’s head is killing him. Voices like church bells in his head, he can’t understand, can’t hqewu nqpi gpqwij vq— _Fuck,_ this hurts. Something inside Felix’s skull is pounding, trying desperately to escape.

They see it enough times as students – artificially-created demonic beasts, shards of blood-red crest stones emerging from their foreheads, gaping maws roaring, that same blood-red on the inside, the tender flesh that melts away with a carefully placed lance strike. Their screams are haunting. Felix feels that now, the shot of pain radiating out.

He steps out of – out of bed? Out of nothingness, into nothingness. Nothing but white as far as he can see. His world, slowly flaking out of existence, has slid away entirely. Felix swallows and, against all reason, looks for Dimitri.

Against that stark, lonely white is a tiny, familiar figure. A head of yellow, dressed in that royal cornflower blue.

“Dima.”

The boy’s eyes light up, a flash of light under a frozen lake of blue. And if Felix had any bit of solid heart left to break, it would, seeing the young Dimitri smile. He’s missing a tooth, a speck of black against the span of white. _Goddess_ , Rodrigue had been so mad. Dimitri had been chasing after Felix when he fell and knocked it out. But Lambert had found it hilarious. _I can’t keep our boys out of trouble._

Even now.

“You… you look like my friend Felix,” Dimitri says, reaching a tiny hand out to Felix, who takes it, unthinkingly. He has to dip down a bit to grab it, following mindlessly behind the younger boy as he walks, slow and purposeful. “Are you from Fraldarius?”

“I am.”

“It’s cold there,” Dimitri frowns. Every step he takes lights up, a cascade of pink and blue. They’re there, in Fraldarius, on the outskirts where their fathers would take them hunting. The stark white slate gives way to the sparkling white of winter, shards of it, like mirror glass reflecting.

Felix smiles, “I know.”

_Step_ – a crackle of twigs snapping underfoot. _Step_ – a splash of water that chills instantly to ice, slicking the once-blank path beneath Felix’s feet. _Step_ – the sun is setting, beams of light peeking over the mountainside.

“Are you Felix?” Dimitri frowns, cocks his head, curious as always. Curious and a bit too bright for his own good.

“Yes. Maybe not your Felix.”

“Huh?” Dimitri worries his lip between his teeth. “My Felix…”

“I would be your age.” Felix watches the landscape change under Dimitri’s feet, those tiny furred boots stepping into color. “But that’s okay.”

“You look tired.”

“I am.”

“And sad.”

“I am.”

“And lonely.”

Children are too blunt, too tactless. Felix has never liked them, cringes to think of himself at that age, a round thing full to the brim with feelings and unchecked anger bubbling beneath the surface. “I am.” Tiny spots of water sprout at his feet like unshed tears, tendrils climbing and spreading so quickly that Felix has to dart out of the way.

“Why?”

They’re at Garreg Mach now. Slivers of ancient stone and mossed walls drop down, wedge themselves into the white expanse, looking as untouched and permanent as they always did to the students – right up until the moment they crumbled to the ground. Ahead, a stained-glass window, and the sun that reflects down that scattered, colorful light. Felix watches it cast rainbows across Dimitri’s face.

“Because I miss you,” Felix chokes out. Lies and obfuscation can’t come here – he knows that somehow. He could never lie to Dimitri, anyway. Not in any way that really matters.

“I’m right here.”

“You’re…” Felix pauses. “You’re right. But it’s different.”

“Will I get big like you?”

Felix snorts. “Bigger. You get massive and I kind of hate you for it.”

For his part, Dimitri looks delighted. “I wanna be tall! I wanna be tall!”

It takes Felix a minute to realize Dimitri wants to be tall _right now_. He dips down to pick the small boy up, props him up on his shoulders so he can look up at what might be called a sky, crackling with silent lightning the color of strawberry jam. They watch for a bit, their own personal fireworks show, before Dimitri kicks those little feet, urging Felix on.

“Am I your personal carriage?”

“Yes,” Dimitri says, but seems to think better of it. “Oh, no well—that’s quite rude of me. You can let me down, if you don’t want to!”

“I’m kidding,” Felix shakes his shoulders a bit, jostling Dimitri around like he really is in a carriage that’s going over a bumpy road, and Dimitri dissolves into giggles, hands fisting absentmindedly in Felix’s hair, pulling it from his ponytail. Glenn used to do that all the time, for Felix and Dimitri both. 

_Huh_. It’s been a while since Felix could think of Glenn without feeling that bottomless pit of grief open in the pit of his stomach.

“Fe! Felix look!” Dimitri points one small fist toward what looks like a battlefield coming into view in the distance, painting itself into existence one stroke at a time, until the tableau is complete: a broad green field; soldiers in white and gold clashing with those in black and purple; at the head of the golden army, a man with a mane to match, long blond hair that tumbles across his shoulders. “It’s Loog!”

The two armies clash, but the sound of metal on metal never comes. Instead, it sounds like music: the jut of a lance and the pluck of a harp string; the arch of a sword and the sound of fingers dancing across a piano; a charge of magic and the swell of a violin. Never has war been so beautiful before.

It takes Felix a moment to respond to Dimitri. “No… it’s you.”

“Me?” Felix can’t see, but he’s sure Dimitri’s face is screwed up in confusion. “Is this the future, do you think?”

“No,” Felix repeats, eyes glued to the way the man on the battlefield moves, pristine and near-untouchable on top of his mount, a dappled grey horse, his massive lance sweeping down across enemy ranks. And the man that follows behind, felling any soldiers that approach his back – a man wearing layered armor, one thin, long sword held firmly between hands scarred from dark magic, dark ponytail whipping behind his back “It’s us. That was us.”

Dimitri leans down the best he can, rests his head on top of Felix’s, and watches the fight play out. The two men are unstoppable, even as their comrades begin to fall. “Us in the past?”

_Maybe_ , Felix thinks. But he can’t answer, too enraptured.

“Father told me in some places like Almyra they believe in re… re, um—”

“Reincarnation,” Felix finishes. “I guess it’s possible.” Why not? With everything Felix has seen, why would he doubt this, of all things?

“So maybe!” Dimitri laughs, but it sounds like glass shattering, scattering across the floor. He starts to grow heavy on Felix’s shoulders, like he’s growing in real time. “Maybe that was us. And this is us. And—” He keeps talking, but the words stop making sense, and the weight on Felix’s shoulders grows until he can’t take it—he bucks Dimitri off on instinct, feeling guilty the second he does.

Except, when he turns to apologize—

“Felix.” There’s that smile again. That one eye crinkled with delight. Dimitri, full-grown, as Felix remembers him. Before they last died, before Dimitri held him and let death take them. 

He looks out on the battlefield, but the figures are already starting to dissolve, streaking across the landscape like an unfinished oil painting dipped in water. Loog looks so very much like Dimitri. “It’s funny, I never realized it before. But maybe we really were born for each other.”

“Maybe,” Felix whispers. Any louder and he’s sure his voice would crack. “I’m not so fatalistic.”

“That sounds like you,” Dimitri’s voice sounds wrong, like there’s an echo, or a second voice speaking right after his. “After all this, you still don’t believe in fate?”

_Ah,_ Felix realizes. This isn’t Dimitri. Or maybe it’s a fragment of Dimitri, a scrap left over from another timeline. But he’s been tampered with, possessed maybe – the force behind all of this is using him, speaking to Felix through him.

“I don’t.” Felix answers, voice firm this time. “I could end this whole thing, if I wanted.”

“And it would start anew!” Dimitri says – the voice of the child, the young girl, is more obvious now, layered beneath his voice like a sinister echo. “Do you ever wonder why?”

Of course. Of _course_ he does. Only a fool wouldn’t. But Felix has had enough wondering for ten lifetimes. “Who are you? What do you want?” He has the insane idea to pull his sword from his sheathe, to try and solve this situation with violence as he always has, as he’s been taught, as was drilled into his mind since he was old enough to hold a blade.

“I’m—well, it’s complicated,” the Dimitri says, hip cocked in a distinctly un-Dimitri way. “Would you believe me if I said I was the Goddess?”

“I’d believe anything at this point.”

“Hah!” The mirage changes, black and blue and blond dissolving into some kind of green, but not yet solidifying into anything Felix can understand. “Now that’s _not_ very like you, Felix. You were always so skeptical.”

It feels idiotic, _worse_ than idiotic, to be skeptical of something he’s living through. And still – the voice is right. How many mornings during that four-year stretch had Felix woken up and convinced himself he’d imagined the whole thing?

“Then show yourself,” Felix snaps, hand clenching and unclenching around the grip of his dagger. “I loathe cowards like you. In the shadows with your riddles and nonsense.”

The laugh starts from Dimitri’s mouth, then grows, swelling like music as the color of the air around them seems to shift – blank white swept away by the red and brown of the desert. Buildings rise in the distance, massive blocky things made of clay and dusted with sand. Streets carve themselves through canyons of stiff stone, bare and lonely. And the child’s laugh echoes through them, bounces through alleys, lands in Felix’s head, rattling around as the shape of Dimitri changes to that of a girl with long, ragged green hair and a dress decorated with gold.

“Well?” She turns in place, fringes of her dress drawing circles in the sand. “What do you think?”

Felix winces against the harsh wind and, piety be damned, scoffs at the Goddess. “A child? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean, young man?” The girl cocks her hips and pouts, actually _pouts_ at him.

“Just that you’ve made a fucking mess of everything,” Felix snaps. He doesn’t pause to consider whether cursing the Goddess herself out is rude.

But she doesn’t look offended. Instead, she looks – wistful, almost. Maybe there is wisdom beyond her apparent years in those eyes, the way they seem to peel Felix apart with a simple look. “You think it was I who create this _mess?_ ”

“Who else?”

_You –_ the voice comes not from any mouth, any person. It rings out from Felix’s own mind, like the mysterious voice is living there, settling in and making a home. _You did._

The child is gone, the dusty landscape barren and blank again. And Felix looks down at – himself. Young, unrecognizable, still made up in a dress with a muddy hem and hair all askew. He was always so certain, even as a child. What happened to change that?

_It was ruthless slaughter and you loved every second._

_You are so stubborn. I’ve warned you before._

_I suppose the Dimitri I once knew died during that slaughter in Duscur._

_But you would do anything to save him. Would you not?_

Felix could travel across Fodlan and back and never escape that Fraldarius duty, carved deep into him like a brand. Duty and—

And something else, maybe.

This is Felix’s mess, his personal disaster. It’s been his all along, his decisions like stepping stones. Not the power to decide what happens, but to force the universe to begin anew, that rock-hard stubbornness enough to flood the world, destroy reality and start again.

To tear down the world and start again – what else could do that?

_He loves him._

_He loves him, he loves him, he loves him._

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Fhirdiad is wasting away.

The decay isn’t quite so natural. There are no ruins, no anonymous stone monuments with faces washed away by time, no sense of nature winding its way through the stone walls to reclaim what it once owned. 

Instead, pieces just seem to – disappear. Sheard off like rust from a blade. Buildings start to lose character, all the filigree and grandeur of the capital replaced with a jagged-edged white marble wasteland. Felix wanders and finds almost no one to block his way.

It’s a simple matter now, now that the streets are nearly empty. Felix doesn’t bother with the catacombs – he walks right through the doors of the castle and down to where the prisoners are kept, encountering two, maybe three guards that he dispatches easily.

“Felix!”

Dimitri looks up at him through those rusty bars with a small smile, the smile he reserves for Felix, free of that princely veneer. Felix used to hold every one of those genuine, unvarnished smiles close to his chest, replay them in his memory until he fell asleep. And then wake up and pretend he didn’t.

He catches Dimitri off-guard. That’s the only reason he’s able to pin him so easily to the wall of the cell, to drag his dagger across the thin, pale skin of Dimitri’s throat, just enough to draw blood.

“What if I kill you myself?” Felix asks, almost curious. “Is that it? Is that some punishment?”

“Felix—”

“I threatened it enough, didn’t I?” His voice hitches, falling to a raspy whisper. “I said I hated you, that I’d end you myself and—and—”

Endless battles, drills, training, spars, _repetition._ And yet now is when Felix finally feels the drain, the ache settling into his bones, clouding his mind. He wants to put his weapons down and never sully his hands again. He wants to sleep for a thousand years. He wants everything he’ll never have.

“It won’t work.” Dimitri whispers, bringing his hands up to rest on top of Felix’s wrists, no force behind it, just a small comfort. It would take just a flick of Dimitri’s wrist to turn the tables – he’s taller, stronger by a mile. But he slumps down against Felix’s hold instead, and the fringe of his bangs tickle Felix’s wrist. “I knew you would come.”

“I told you I would.”

“True enough,” Dimitri mumbles, and his head dips, until his lips are brushing Felix’s wrist, kissing the pulse point there. It tickles, it makes Felix feel like something small and delicate, like something he hates – but he doesn’t move. If anything, he grips at Dimitri tighter, knuckles going white. “But that’s not it.”

“What is it then?” Felix finally drops his grip, re-sheathing his dagger. “What do you remember?”

_Pain, death, torture, loneliness._

“You, mostly,” Dimitri smiles, head cocking to the side. “But I have been accused more than once of having a kind of… tunnel vision, when it comes to you.”

Felix nearly swallows his tongue. “Get to it. We don’t have time.”

“Don’t we?” Dimitri pushes himself up from the wall, rapping his knuckles on it thoughtfully. “It has been more than a day since I saw any guards. If I had to say,” he looks down, pinning Felix with that familiar, intense stare. “You and I are the only ones here.”

The prince, in all his disheveled glory, steps into Felix’s space, and Felix steps back in turn. Now he’s the one trapped up against the corner of the room, the stone wall to his right, the rusted bars to his left. “No guard, and you decided to stay here in a disgusting cell?”

Dimitri’s smile is equal parts menacing and charming. He props an arm up against the cell wall, and Felix could easily dip under his arm. But he stays put. “I was waiting for someone.”

“You never answered me,” Felix’s voice goes quiet. “You said you remembered me, but what else?”

Dimitri hums to himself, chewing his bottom lip as he thinks. Always a bad habit of his, ending up with chapped lips that would crack and bleed in the winter months. Now, Felix watches those lips with the knowledge of how they feel against his own.

“We were killed. Well, _I_ was.”

“Brilliant,” Felix scoffs.

“No, no, let me tell it—” Dimitri laughs under his breath, leaning back, releasing Felix from that imaginary hold. “It was snowy, and I was distracting you. But I saw an Imperial soldier coming at you, and he threw his javelin and I just—” Dimitri pauses, looking down as his palms, as if actually realizing the implications of dying and still being _here_. “Lunged in front of you.”

A pause. “An idiotic thing to do, honestly.”

“You would have been killed if I hadn’t!”

“And you don’t know any other way to stop a weapon than to _jump in front of it?”_ Felix scoffs, “Besides you really think the life of a duke’s son is as important as the fucking crown prince?”

“It is to me,” Dimitri grabs for Felix’s hand, a messy tangle of fingers. “If something happened to you I—”

“What else?” Felix cuts him off, red coloring his face. “What else do you remember?”

Dimitri reaches for Felix’s other hand, a small smile crossing his face when he isn’t refused. “Why do I have a feeling there is a right and wrong answer to this?”

Few have called Felix a man of words – and he swiftly decides now is not the time to change that. He surges up, bumping his lips up against Dimitri’s in some clumsy amalgamation of a kiss. Again, now – and since _when_ has Dimitri been so tall – with his hands pulling Dimitri down by his wrists to his level, squeezing his eyes shut, pressing small, chaste kisses against the corner of Dimitri’s mouth, then the swell of his bottom lip. Why is this so _hard_ —

“Oh, Felix.”

Felix can feel more than hear Dimitri’s voice, a hum against his lips. He’s smiling, and untangling his hand from Felix’s, reaching up to cradle the side of Felix’s neck, drawing circles around the hinge of Felix’s jaw with his thumb.

“My Felix,” Dimitri’s voice is soft rumble, but firm. And this time, when their lips meet, he tilts Felix’s head _just_ so and – _oh._ There it is, the same as it was that night in the cabin, the same as it’s been in Felix’s dreams and nightmares alike, that desperate, hungry feeling.

“Yeah?” Felix asks – who, or for what, he’s not sure. He flings his arms up around the broad shape of Dimitri’s shoulders, cupping the back of his neck with one hand, tangling the other in that messy blond hair.

Felix has never kissed anyone but Dimitri – never known anything but _this_ , the hot exhale and small, needy noises and the rush to grab at each other like this is their last night alive. He’s not sure he _could_ kiss someone else, not after this. Not after knowing how Dimitri tastes.

“I wanted you—” Dimitri peppers his words with kisses, to the tops of Felix’s cheekbones, down the cut of his jaw. “For so long, you had no idea. My Felix, I remember. That night I remember, wanting you so badly.”

“I’m not—” Felix’s voice catches in his throat, and he tugs at Dimitri’s hair hard enough to wrench Dimitri’s face away, until his neck is craning backwards. “I’m not _your_ Felix. Don’t forget that, boar.”

Dimitri couldn’t look more smitten if he tried. “Of course. I could never forget, it’s part of you that makes me love you so.”

“Don’t say—” Felix exhales hard, burying himself in Dimitri’s neck, cheeks hot. “Don’t say things like that so easily.” Not when Felix can’t say them back – not when he doesn’t know _how_ to.

“You know,” Dimitri says, hands running up and down Felix’s sides, finally settling on his hips. “I had very grand plans for you that night.”

Felix huffs out a laugh, but it doesn’t do much to hide the shiver that runs down his spine. “So confident, aren’t you? What if I had turned you away?”

Dimitri’s hands tighten around Felix’s hips, just tight enough to leave fingerprint bruises, and he _tugs_ , pulling Felix half into his lap, to straddle the thigh he has propped up against the wall. Felix’s hand flies to his mouth, and he bites down on the inside of his pointer finger to hold back a whine.

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t.”

There are better places for this than an empty prison cell beneath a crumbling city in an empty world. But it’s been so long since Felix has felt this, the rush of blood, the coil of arousal in his stomach that has his body going rigid as he grinds experimentally up against Dimitri’s thigh, and—

” _Fuck_ —”

“Felix,” Dimitri whispers his name like a prayer, repeats it like a mantra. “Please, let me—I want to be—”

“Quiet, fucking—” Felix tips his head up, eyes lidded and face flushed. “Just kiss me. Please.”

Dimitri has never been strong enough to deny Felix; he kisses him, swallows down the small whimpers and wet noises that drip from Felix’s mouth as he moves against Dimitri’s thigh, the muscle of it just enough to hit just right against his dick, swollen and red beneath his leggings. Dimitri holds Felix’s hips tight and moves him like he weighs nothing at all, and just that small demonstration of strength has Felix leaking. This would all be mortifying, _horrifying_ , except—

Except it’s Dimitri. Dimitri holding Felix firm and grounded.

Up against the wall like this, Dimitri is _everywhere_ – thigh propped between Felix’s own, shoulders caging him in, mouth keeping him captured, hands tight at his waist. And Felix can feel Dimitri’s own arousal, the hot line of it bumping up against his stomach with each hitch up of his hips. Felix snakes a hand between their bodies and rubs at it clumsily, feeling the wet drip of precome staining his trousers; and just that small point of contact has Dimitri shuddering in his ear, _I love you, I love you, I love you._

Felix’s breath goes short, mouth twisted, babbling half-mad – _I don’t hate you, I never hated you_. And the words between them that Felix won’t say, _can’t_ say, not like this. Not to this Dimitri. Not to a Dimitri who won’t remember.

It doesn’t take long, just a well-timed roll of his hips and the sound of Dimitri’s voice, breath ghosting hot against the shell of his ear – Felix falls apart, biting down at the soft spot between Dimitri’s shoulder and neck as he shakes through his orgasm, Dimitri’s massive hands soothing up and down his sides. He feels Dimitri follow soon after, hips bucking erratically against his hand, cock twitching hot under his fingers.

_Fuck_. “Fuck.”

“Beautiful,” Dimitri whispers, kissing Felix’s sweaty temple, voice tight.

“M’sweaty,” Felix mumbles, voice slurring as he comes down from his orgasm. But Dimitri seems undeterred.

“You’ll remember this,” Dimitri whispers, kissing up Felix’s jaw, leaving a small trail of red spots in his wake. “Won’t you?”

Felix pushes down a shiver. “I will.”

“And I won’t. Will I?”

“You won’t.” The reality, cold and rigid as it is. The problem Felix hasn’t yet solved.

There’s a spot behind the castle, a favorite reading place of Dimitri’s mother. Or so he’s told, in tales from servants and handmaidens who adored her, who pass on stories of her after her passing. It becomes Dimitri’s favorite hideaway, an escape from the expectant eyes that follow him throughout the court, begging nobles and those who would chase the opportunity to gain favor with the prince, young though he is.

Felix knows this. He knows because Dimitri takes him there often, grabs his hand and offers no explanation until they arrive at the secret garden. Vines grow up white trellises that line the walkway, opening up to a small patch of yellow and white flowers. _The common daisy,_ Dimitri says, like a secret. _My mother loved them._

Someone would always find them, drag them back to reality. But now – no one is here to break that spell. Dimitri grabs Felix’s hand, and Felix lets him. And they lie, still and quiet and at peace amongst the blooming flowers until the sun starts to set.

“Run away with me.”

It takes Felix a moment to respond, to unstick his throat. “I can’t.”

Dimitri props himself up on one elbow, “Why is that?”

“Where would we run?” Felix closes his eyes, if only to avoid the pout Dimitri is probably giving him. “Everything is gone.”

He hears Dimitri lie back down, this time edging himself just a hair closer to Felix.

“Do you remember when we used to talk about it as kids?” Dimitri says dreamily. “Running away together?”

Of course he does. This is the third time now Dimitri’s asked this of him – Felix isn’t sure he can refuse a fourth time.

“We’re not kids anymore,” Felix answers, half a whisper. The only way he’s sure Dimitri’s heard him is the way he squeezes Felix’s hand – and then lets go.

“I suppose you’re right.”

It’s past nightfall by the time they leave the garden and reach the stables – or, what’s left of them. Dimitri insists on holding Felix’s hand the whole way, even as they prepare his horse. Nothing has felt more like a suicide mission than this, packing all the necessities into a bag to prepare Dimitri to ride off into an empty world. But Felix goes through the motions, pushing Dimitri onward.

“You won’t come with me?” Dimitri asks, hooking one foot into the stirrup to swing up and onto the saddle.

The corner of Felix’s mouth twitches up. “Only one horse.”

“Of course, you could always ride with—”

“Dimitri,” Felix interrupts, hands fisted in the fabric of Dimitri’s coat. “When you—when I—” he makes a frustrated noise, and Dimitri hides a laugh behind his hand. “When we get this right, don’t be a fool. Don’t die out there for nothing.”

“Of course not.” Dimitri bends down, and Felix closes the gap, standing up on his tip toes so Dimitri can kiss his forehead. “I’ve got too much to come home to.”

+

_Are you ready, now?_

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1181**

Felix wakes up. It’s the morning of the execution of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, former Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Faerghus, now a known traitor. At nightfall, he is to be beheaded before the Goddess and all his former subjects.

Sordid, somber news. And yet, the birds are singing, the capital is bustling with visitors, the sun still shines. Felix still wakes up, same as he always as.

There’s a hurried, desperate knocking at his door. Felix throws his blanket off and pulls himself to his feet at the same second his father seems to dispense with politeness and finally burst into the room, panting heavily. 

(His hair is frayed and frizzled – actually, Felix is sure he’s never seen his father with a hair out of place before. And he has to choke down a smile because now certainly isn’t the time.)

“Felix, he’s—” Rodrigue is gripping the doorframe for dear life. “Something’s happening.”

Felix has never seen this reality before. It’s new, like all the ones before it, unique in its way: the birds sing a slightly different tune, the bed creaks in a new place, the faces that may pass him come in different configurations. All things Felix had never taken much note of before all this. _Blood, blades, battle_ – a childish approximation of his attention span. Now, every single speck of dust seems significant, divinely placed. 

Is it better? Who can say – all Felix knows is that he _knows_ ; he knows exactly what is father means, knows to strap on his armor and grab his sword and sprint toward the public square. And Fhirdiad—

—it’s all there. Exactly as it should be. Felix staggers for a moment – just a moment – and uses his elbow to knife through a crowd of onlookers that are barely being contained by castle security guards.

There’s civil war in the Fhirdiad Square. The glint of dangerous magic and the shine of swords and the flash of royal blue, all calling to Felix like a siren song. It feels right, more than right, when he smashes through the wall of armored guards with a shot of thoron, flying into the fray like it’s the most natural thing – like how he used to jump into those rare warm lakes down in Galatea territory, visiting Ingrid and her dour father. Now, Felix swims in limbs and dives over the swing of an axe and meets familiar green eyes and white wings hovering above the calamity.

“Hey,” Ingrid’s grin is easier than Felix has seen it in a while. “Nice of you to show up.”

Felix just grunts, parrying a fierce lance stab, catching the long wooden staff with his hand and throwing the soldier off balance. He goes stumbling into a battalion of mages, and they all go toppling, in a way Felix almost wants to laugh at.

Actually – he might already be laughing.

“Hey—Felix!” Sylvain’s baritone always makes marching orders easy. Felix’s head whips toward him instantly, knocking away an errant sword blow with his short blade. “His Highness is ahead!”

Sylvain, Ingrid – they’re clearing a path for him. An understanding built between them almost since birth, spoken and unspoken and made real in these small acts. Dimitri will lead; Felix will cut the path. One will always follow the other. Infuriating, really, to be assigned a role before you can speak, before you can even think. But Felix nods, and rushes ahead, that unseen force pulling him to Dimitri’s right side.

“Boar!”

Dimitri’s head whips up from where he’s saddling his horse. It’s a pathetic-looking steed, but one the owner likely won’t miss. Felix has to wedge himself between a narrow alley just to reach the small stable where Dimitri stands, so tall his head is hitting the scaffolding.

“Felix.” Soft as ever.

“Where’s Dedue?”

Dimitri’s eye widens a fraction, “I—I didn’t expect—” He clears his throat, something heavy settling in his voice. "He fought off the guards that came after me. I didn’t see but—”

“He’s alive,” Felix tugs at Dimitri’s bangs, an old, childish gesture, something he always did to snap Dimitri out of his contemplative, dream-like states. Dimitri blinks, startled. “He would never go down so easy.”

Dimitri gives a wobbly smile. “You saying that… makes me believe it must be true.”

A snort. “Why is everything _I_ say more believable?”

“You are nothing if not honest.”

“Is that unusual?” Felix folds his arms tight across his chest. “Are you in the habit of keeping dishonest friends?”

They don’t have time to bicker, to trade sarcastic barbs like this. Half the city wants Dimitri’s head on a platter, and Felix is the last barrier between him and a long ride off into the sunset.

But something tells Felix they have time.

“Hey, b—Dimitri.”

Dimitri exhales hard, and Felix can see the worried storm already brewing behind his eye, the crackle of lighting in the furrow of his brow. Sometimes – most times, for Felix – reading Dimitri’s mind is easy, and now all he sees are shadows and blood and ghosts and the sound of Dedue’s protective roar. It’s heavy, his mind. A burden, in many ways.

“It is nice to hear my name from your mouth again.”

_I’ve said it before_ , Felix wants to say. _I’ve said it crying for you, with your mouth on mine, with you between my legs._

But he clamps his jaw shut tight, and swallows the lump in his throat.

“Dimitri,” Felix repeats, reaching for Dimitri’s hand, thumb running across his pulse point. “Stay alive.”

_For me_ , goes unspoken. But the way Dimitri’s mouth parts and eye goes glassy tells Felix that he understands.

“I promise.” And no one in Faerghus ever makes a promise lightly.

This is it. This may be the last time. Felix lets himself savor it, hold the silence between them, hold onto Dimitri’s hand that small bit longer, that small point of contact like a lifeline.

Dimitri opens his mouth, and Felix cuts him off. “Don’t,” he starts. Embarrassing how his voice shakes, how it cracks. “Don’t ask me to come with you. Because if you do, I will.”

For a moment, Felix thinks Dimitri will ask anyway. But finally, he closes his mouth, nods, and his hand slips away. Until all that’s left is lingering warmth in Felix’s palm.

+

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, once-prince of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, is dead. Captured, they say, right at the edge of Fhirdiad territory. Cornelia, the Western lords, and the burgeoning Faerghus Dukedom express their regret that the subjects he betrayed were not able to witness his undoing first-hand. Nevertheless, the Faerghan people are now free of his treachery.

Felix wakes up, and time marches on. He heads to that spot of the forest where he saw Dimitri slip away – a good a place as any to start his search. To fill that empty space, that burgeoning legend.

He’s got nothing but time, now.


	3. Chapter 3

**25 th of the Guardian Moon, Imperial Year 1185**

The skeleton of the cathedral makes a good home for the walking corpse that uses Dimitri’s name. He stands still and unmoving as a statue, the bleeding heart, bruised black and blue, nestled among the broken ribs of the pews where they once sang hymns praising the Goddess and her wisdom.

Felix visits religiously. He must still be a believer.

When they find Dimitri, it feels different than all those lifetimes ago on the Sreng border. Not just different because _Dimitri_ is different, or because his mind has changed and warped into something nearly (nearly) unrecognizable – but because this is the Dimitri that Felix promised everything to. This is the Dimitri he saved, that he _thought_ he saved.

“I hear you.”

His voice is a low, raspy whisper, hoarse from lack of use. Felix still catches it even across the vast empty cathedral.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your thoughts,” Dimitri mumbles, as if that explains anything.

Felix settles back against the cool stone column. He keeps his arms folded so tight across his chest that his fingers have started to tingle. “Are you a mind reader too? I’ve never met such a talented animal.”

Nothing. Nothing for so long that Felix thinks Dimitri’s decided to let the jab lie. Getting a rise out of him outside of the roar of battle is impossible; he seems empty, vacant as an ornamental vase.

But then, “I always know what you’re thinking.” Another pause. “Felix.”

Recognition. He knows it’s Felix; he’s speaking to _him_ and not some imagined wisp of a ghost over his shoulder. What a small, pathetic thing to spark hope in Felix’s chest. But it does, nevertheless.

Felix drums his fingers against his forearm, trying to get the blood circulating. Maybe Byleth can help, but really, he wishes Dedue were here. In another time, that thought might have brought Dimitri some joy, to have Felix wishing for Dedue’s company, his dear friends all getting along.

It’s well past midnight, and they’ve got reinforcements arriving in the morning that will need feeding, training, and Felix to whip them into shape. “I’m leaving,” Felix announces, turning on his heel and waiting a beat. Waiting for Dimitri to – what, suddenly come to his senses? Chase after Felix with that familiar, earnest look?

Silence.

Felix stalks back to his room with slow, heavy steps. And he only looks back once, to see the rise and fall of Dimitri’s back; that massive, beating heart.

Still alive.

+

Felix stops hearing voices the second they cross the threshold of Garreg Mach – or whatever’s left of it. The crumbled ruins are so quiet now, empty where students used to gather and gossip, always too loud for Felix’s liking.

He hardly notices the voice’s absence at first. But Dimitri does that to him, doesn’t he? Felix’s vision tunnels in on the tempest tearing across the ruins of the monastery outskirts, the spray of blood that marks his passing. It’s only later, after the bittersweet reunions and stiff, awkward war meetings, that Felix steps into his old dormitory and realizes—

It’s silent.

“How was your trip?” Annette is folding and unfolding and refolding the few clothes she’s brought with her. “Mercedes told me Sylvain told her you were going up to Kleiman territory?”

“Yes.” It’s been a few years since Felix last saw Annette, and maybe a few months since he got back from Kleiman. He spent quite a bit of time there, another spot on his search for Dimitri. If he were to go anywhere, Felix reasoned, it would be Duscur – or, where Duscur used to be. No better place to chase ghosts.

“And?” Annette elbows him in the ribs. “I wanna catch up, tell me about it! Was the trip over the mountains hard?”

It was horrible. With the ordinary trade routes closed due to Kleiman’s paranoia, it was a week alone just to make it to the peak and another week down. Felix flexes his fingers and can still feel the phantom chill that nearly turned his skin blue.

“It was fine.”

Annette is pouting, attempting fruitlessly to smooth a wrinkle out of one of her dresses. “No one wants to talk! You’re all broody, Mercedes is super busy, even _Sylvain_ is being weird.”

“Annie,” Felix sets a hand over hers, watching her go still for the first time since they reached Garreg Mach. “Stop wasting your energy.” On the dress fisted in her hands, on worrying about them all, on wishing their reunion could be something other than what it feels like: a funeral.

But Annette’s never been good at staying still, and her foot starts to tap a second later, a staccato drumbeat against the stone floor. “Okay, can we _do_ something though?”

Felix manages a smile. “Want to spar?”

“Mm, not really,” Annette drops the offending dress and grabs Felix’s wrist, tugging him toward the door. “But let’s go anyway.”

It’s been a while since Felix could create such a steady, predictable drumbeat day to day. He trades ever-changing landscapes, nights spent camped out in enemy territory, and endless fighting for the same dorm where he spent that now-fateful year; meals in the dining hall as always; drills at the training grounds.

All other free time, Felix spends in the cathedral.

“You’re here again.”

Felix never hears Byleth sneak up on him, and this time he startles so hard he almost pulls a muscle. “ _Fuck_ , you can’t—” he stops, seeing the professor giving him that thousand-yard stare. It’s almost unbelievable that they’re back. “Yes, I’m here. You should do something about that thing.”

Byleth cocks their head, following Felix’s line of sight to where Dimitri stands, a slouching mass of furs. “Oh. Dimitri?”

“Yes,” Felix leans back against the pillar he’s been camped out next to for hours now. The soles of his feet are staring to smart. “I can hardly look at the thing in the state it’s in. Do something about it.”

“I’m not…” Byleth pauses – and that’s unlike them, to look so uncertain. “I don’t think I can.”

“Tch,” Felix bites down a frustrated noise. “Don’t just give up like that.” _Not like me, not like I did._ “We—” _Just me_. “We tracked the boar for five years.” _Longer, so much longer than that, adding all the days together_. “I thought he was dead.” _I knew he wasn’t but what if? What if I was wrong about everything?_

It should be a relief to see Dimitri alive, standing on his own two feet, so close to Felix that he could march over in maybe twelve strides and touch him with his own two hands. But dread burrows into Felix’s chest and makes its home.

“In the state he’s in,” Felix sighs. “He might as well be dead.”

“Perhaps,” Byleth mumbles, looking at Dimitri but looking _through_ him, eyes dreamy. Their gaze snaps back to Felix, and they step forward into his space. They’ve never quite understood physical boundaries; it seems five years out of commission hasn’t helped the issue. “Why do you talk about him like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like he’s a thing one second. But the next second he’s a man.”

Felix scoffs, looking up past Dimitri to the stained-glass window that paints them in pastels – something soft, delicate, breakable. Nonetheless, it survived, through the Battle of Garreg Mach and five years after of war. Even while other, less fragile things were broken beyond repair.

“I’m tired,” Felix says, by way of an answer. “I’m going to my room. Don’t bother me unless we’re under attack.”

“Okay,” Byleth nods. And, at the last moment before Felix is out of ear shot, “Felix? Will you come back tomorrow?”

“What for?”

Byleth closes the gap between them in a quick sprint, stopping just short of Felix, cocking their head to the side. “I think he’s calmer when you’re around.”

Felix bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes metal. “How do you know that?”

“I can just tell.” And they say it with so much unfounded confidence that Felix finds himself believing it.

+

Felix doesn’t mean to test Byleth’s hypothesis so soon.

It’s just one day, at first, that Felix doesn’t visit the cathedral. But once the habit is broken, that looming stone ghost becomes easier and easier to avoid. Felix stays away, retreats back to the training grounds, as comfortable and well-worn to him as a good pair of boots.

“Alright, I made my sacrifice for the day,” Ingrid announces, tossing her lance down and collapsing onto one of the benches that line the grounds. “Someone else occupy Felix’s guilt for me.”

“For thee, milady,” Sylvain says, voice jovial as he grabs his own lance and takes his place as Felix’s sparring partner. “I shall throw myself into the pyre.”

“Oh, shut up.” Ingrid rolls her eyes, but when Sylvain tosses her a rag, she gratefully snatches it out of the air to wipe the sweat from her face.

Felix doesn’t wait for Sylvain to get into fighting position; he lunges immediately, and it’s only reflex that allows Sylvain to parry his blow, pushing the staff of his lance with two hands to curve Felix’s blade away from his torso. It was a half-assed blow, anyway, but Sylvain still exhales like he’s been hit by a cannonball.

“Fe, you have to develop some healthier coping mechanisms,” Sylvain ribs, grinning as he goes low, swiping at Felix’s ankles; Felix hops over it easily, but now he’s left himself open for the other end of Sylvain’s lance, the pommel landing hard in his gut. He stumbles back and braces himself on his ankle. _Fuck_ he’s still sore from training with Leonie yesterday. She always has him darting around the training rounds until he’s too tired to think, too tired to pout or brood.

Fighting is easy. Fighting is what he does. Felix holds a sword in his hand before he can spell his own name in the sand with it.

“Just because I don’t want to go _soft_ in the middle of war,” Felix grits out, charging at Sylvain from what he knows is his weak spot, dull edge of his training blade coming down on Sylvain’s wrist. “Unlike some people.”

“ _Fuck_ , alright—” Sylvain does a ridiculous flip backwards to avoid another swipe of Sylvain’s blade. Fucking show off; Ingrid isn’t even watching. “I’m just saying—”

“You’re always talking,” Felix grunts. “Try being a useful sparring partner instead.”

A bit harsh, but Felix doesn’t know any other way. And Sylvain can take it, same as he can take Felix’s overly-aggressive sparring, blows a bit too vicious for friendly fire. His friends all line up to occupy him, let Felix train until he runs himself ragged: Annette, Leonie, Ashe, Ingrid, Sylvain. Even Lysithea humors him. And they all give each other knowing looks when they think Felix isn’t looking.

Dimitri was always the best sparring partner, is the thing.

It’s past dusk when Sylvain and Ingrid beg off to grab dinner at the dining hall, and Felix waves off their invitations. A training dummy will do fine to tire him before bed, so he can shuffle back to his room and pass out before his head hits the pillow. It seems to be the only way to get any sleep these days.

It’s maybe an hour later when the massive door to the training grounds creaks open slowly, and Felix is about to turn to yell at Ingrid that he’s not hungry, except—

“Hm.” It’s that mass of blue and black, the bruise that Felix prods at every night. Dimitri makes a noncommittal noise, like the huff of an animal sniffing for prey, and seems to float into Felix’s view. Something primal skitters through the blood in Felix’s veins.

“What do you want?”

Most Garreg Mach students learn quickly how to navigate the monastery at night, which sticky floorboards to avoid, which stairs to skip, lest they groan and creak and alert the professors to the fact that you’re sneaking out past curfew.

Dimitri’s laugh is a creaky floorboard, that moment of panic when you know you’re _caught_ , and Felix’s heart seizes in its chest. “Say something or get out,” he repeats.

“Why?” Dimitri’s eyes sweep across the training grounds, taking the longest route before landing on Felix’s face, and his voice has uncanny quality behind it when he asks, “Are you frightened?”

_Yes, but not of what you think I am._

“No,” Felix steels himself. “You never fooled me into thinking you were anything but a beast.”

Dimitri cocks his head to the side. He asks, almost childlike, “Didn’t I?”

Didn’t he? Didn’t Felix pin all his childhood dreams and expectations and whishes on Dimitri? Was it any wonder his shoulders buckled under the pressure? Hadn’t Felix held Dimitri’s head in his hands and kissed him until he saw stars, and wondered if that was all it took to save him?

“If you won’t leave, I will.” Felix is inches from the door, hand already ghosting the metal handle, when Dimitri’s hand grips his arm, hard enough that Felix winces, feeling the fingertip bruises forming.

“You were gone,” Dimitri’s voice is a warning. “Do not think me so lost that I would not notice.”

“What the fuck do you care?” Felix goes to wrench his arm away, but Dimitri grips impossibly harder. The muscle tenses under his palm, and Dimitri’s one blue eye flares watching Felix squirm. He _likes_ this.

Felix should scream, he should be angry. He should fight. But he’s so _tired_. Tired of thinking he’s lost Dimitri for the last time, only to watch him die in new ways. To kneel with his hands buried in Dimitri’s grave, digging through the soft soil, watching it slip through his fingers and cover that pallid face again and again.

Nothing gets solved, nothing new unearthed. Felix’s arm falls from Dimitri’s grip; he makes it out of the training grounds, stops at the infirmary to have Manuela heal the already-blooming bruises. No one will be the wiser. But Dimitri keeps finding Felix – in the Knight’s Hall, by the stables, always when Felix is alone, when no one is around to confirm that Dimitri is anything other than Felix’s own delusion. Every time Dimitri speaks, Felix waits for that childlike voice of the Goddess to come out instead, if only to soothe the eerie silence in his own head.

Only once does Dimitri find him when there is someone else around. It’s Ashe, of all people, who looks over Felix’s shoulder while they’re rifling through the pantry looking for a snack, and he goes deathly silent. He’s pale as a sheet, freckles standing out against the pallid white, and he slaps Felix’s shoulder until he turns around. It’s Dimitri, looming near the door. The air goes cold; he turns every room he steps into a tomb.

“Go back to your cave, boar,” Felix spits, turning back to the pantry with a dismissive snort.

“Felix!” Ashe hisses. “I’ve never seen His Highness out of the cathedral before…”

Felix says coolly, “That’s not Dimitri.” That’s an animal; that’s a beast stalking its prey. On good days, that’s a man who hasn’t yet realized he’s dead.

Dimitri must hear them. He pauses, in the middle of a step, turning slow on his heel and heading back out into the night air. Beside Felix, Ashe lets out a long breath.

There’s no sense in indulging him like this, no sense in doing the same thing over and waiting for a different outcome. Felix has done enough of that for his lifetime and then some. Felix tore the world apart for him and but it back together again. So, to hell with repetition. If Dimitri is so intent on burying himself alive, let him. Let him stand alone in that living tomb.

+

**21 st of the Great Tree Moon, Imperial Year 1185**

Dedue is alive.

Felix had said so himself, all those years ago. But until Dedue’s roar reaches his ears and he feels the ground shake as he steps onto the battlefield, Felix doesn’t really believe it. It would be too good to be true, would tie everything from that day up with too neat a bow.

“Good to have you back,” Felix says, breathless from the fight. And he really, really means it.

But even Dedue cannot shake the grip of Dimitri’s ghosts loose. So, they carry on without him.

“Okay!” Sylvain plants his hands down on the table after a strategy meeting, while the group is starting to disperse. “Ingrid and I are gonna go camping and hunt the day after tomorrow. Just a heads up.”

Felix looks incredulously over at Ingrid, but she’s just nodding, looking anywhere but at the faces that are all turning to her with various degrees of disbelief. If there’s anything Sylvain hates more than the cramped, dirty spaces that come with camping, it’s being out in the forest _hunting_ while doing so.

“Hunting,” Felix deadpans, lifting a brow.

“Hunting,” Ingrid repeats, finally looking at him. Her face is remarkably straight. “We’ll need rations to get us through the next few weeks, especially with new reinforcements coming to protect the monastery while we’re gone.”

“And I’ve been practicing,” Sylvain pipes up, making a movement with his arms like he’s shooting a bow. Sylvain has never been able to shoot anything more than three feet in front of his face.

Byleth looks unimpressed. “Fine. Be careful.”

“I will accompany you,” Dedue says, at the same time Felix announces from the opposite end of the table, “I’m going too.”

“Guys,” Sylvain says, small and tight, while Ingrid makes a startled, mangled noise before she can catch herself.

But the deed is done, Byleth agrees, and Felix darts out of the room simply too fast for Sylvain to catch. They ride out the day after next, just north of the monastery, to an area replete with deer and rabbits. Ingrid is the one to suggest they split into two hunting parties, and she snatches Sylvain away so quickly Felix can only catch the white glint of his grin and a small salute before they’re disappearing into the brush.

“Incredible.”

Dedue ties the horses up, unpacking their equipment from the saddles. “You do not approve?”

“Romance during a war is fruitless,” Felix scoffs, pulling out his hunting dagger to inspect the blade. Lack of use and carelessness has led to a thin rust forming near the handle. “I don’t care either way.”

“Hm,” Dedue makes a noncommittal noise, buckling his armor on. “Shall we head out, then?”

It’s always like this; Dedue’s ever-present calmness, Felix’s sparks setting an otherwise ordinary conversation aflame. “If you have something to say, say it.”

“I don’t.”

“Fine,” Felix sheathes his dagger with a harsh movement. “Then I don’t either.”

Dedue looks unconvinced. Lying to him was always a fool’s errand, least of all because Dedue never really cared one way or another, never pried. But maybe the years _have_ changed him, because he clears his throat and says, “And the reason you wanted to come out here was?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“Are you?”

Felix says _fuck you,_ and that seems to settle the issue for the moment. They make, to the surprise of them both, adept hunting partners. Dedue sets small traps for some rabbits while Felix scouts for signs of deer, and for such a large man Dedue is soft-footed as he follows Felix down the trail. They bag two deer and half a dozen rabbits and decide to call it quits before it gets dark, to leave time to field dress their catches. They don’t talk, which is no surprise; Felix finds himself enjoying the quiet company, which is.

(He never liked noise, before it all. Now, he seems to crave it, wanting something to drown out his own thoughts.)

Ingrid and Sylvain don’t make it back until the sun is already set, and they’ve both got three pheasants in each hand. Their hair is suspiciously matted in the back and Ingrid’s got a few too many leaves sticking out of her bangs, but Felix just arches a brow and leaves it at that.

Dedue gets the dubious honor of preparing one of the pheasants for them to share for dinner. Sylvain says, “Who brought wine?” and Ingrid, to everyone’s surprise, pulls out a wineskin.

“Small sips only,” she says. And then, quieter, “I only brought enough for two people.” Dedue politely defers, but Felix takes an overgenerous swig while making a rude gesture at Sylvain.

It’s really not a surprise when Dedue and Felix find themselves alone again, Sylvain and Ingrid excusing themselves to look at what Sylvain says is _a really beautiful moon tonight, right?_ Neither of them has ever been masters at subtlety.

Dedue stokes the fire. “How is His Highness?”

“You never used to be so talkative,” Felix mumbles, reaching for the abandoned wineskin. Empty. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Perhaps.”

A minute of grating silence goes by, just the crackling of the fire. Felix can’t take the placid look on Dedue’s face any longer. “Haven’t you seen him?”

“I have.”

A snort. “Then you know how he’s doing.” Dedue looks up, pins Felix against the forest floor with that too-honest gaze. But he doesn’t say anything, just waits. Felix feels his lip wobble, and tightens his jaw. “I thought he would be,” he waves a hand in the air. “Better. With you here.”

“I don’t know if _better_ is the word,” Dedue admits. “But he did speak to me, once. He has nightmares,” Dedue’s voice goes uncharacteristically shaky. “Of dying, and returning, and dying again. Of seeing…” He pauses, and his jaw flexes, like he’s trying to bite down the thought. “He said he sees you die. Always because of him. I thought back then—when you told us how many times you had seen him die, part of me wondered. If we were only haunting him further.”

Shock and heat flare in Felix’s chest in equal measure. _He remembers –_ not just Dedue, but Dimitri as well. He can’t decide if he’s relieved or disappointed or scared or – all of it, all of it at once. “You think,” Felix wets his lips, watching the fire flicker, and can’t decide if it’s dread or relief settling in his gut. “You think it would have been better to leave him to die, then?”

“You know that is not what I’m saying,” Dedue waves a hand, warding off the sting of Felix’s words. “What happened has happened. I have no desire to dredge up the past.”

“It can do that well enough on its own,” Felix finishes.

“Precisely.”

The past never grows smaller, even as memories fade. Their imprint remains, unseen puppet strings moving us, even if we don’t notice it happening. Felix hacks and hacks and swings his sword and still can’t get the ties to snap. Why should Dimitri fare any better?

“I never said but… Thank you,” Felix grits out, after a small pause, the words like sand in his mouth. “For saving him.”

“I did not do it for you.” It’s not unkind; Dedue is working something between those massive hands – a woodcarving of a small bird. He moves his knife absentmindedly, a man who doesn’t know how to do anything but create.

And Felix: a man trained from the day he was born to destroy.

“You really remember, then?” Felix waits a minute to ask, but his breath still stutters in his chest. He can’t decide what to do with his hands, can’t look at them without seeing blood. Dedue’s eyes follow him, curious-like, like he’s a bird that wandered into his greenhouse and can’t work out how to escape. Felix’s frantic eyes meet his, and it’s not the first time he realizes, but it might be the first time he does so consciously – there’s a reason Dimitri always looked his calmest around Dedue.

Dedue has steadily been leaning forward, and now he finally moves back, giving Felix space. “I remember being surprised.”

“That I would go so far for the boar?”

“No.” Dedue lets the word sit. “Before then, you had deluded yourself into thinking you were so different from your brother. I was surprised to see you embracing it instead.”

That scratches an old wound, and Felix feels the blood trickle but doesn’t make a move. “I am different.”

“In some ways,” Dedue concedes. “Dimitri spoke about Glenn often. He never considered you two very similar.”

And that’s – a relief, a surprising relief, an old weight off Felix’s back that he had nearly forgotten was there. Glenn was always so high in Dimitri’s mind, lofty and lauded. In his worst, most unspeakable hours, caged by grief and sick with worry, Felix would think – surely, Dimitri resented him. Surely, Dimitri looked at Glenn’s cold, dead memory and then looked at Felix and thought _it should have been you._

It’s not that Felix didn’t want to be like Glenn; it’s that he wanted to be Felix more.

“Heh,” Felix manages a laugh. “Never thought I’d hear that.”

Dedue finishes his carving, and looks down at with a strange expression. For a moment, Felix thinks he’ll throw it into the fire – no room for trinkets and frivolities during war. But then he remembers something Dimitri said, something Dedue had told him – _the benefit of having small, beautiful things around._

Dedue pockets the figure. “Will you speak to him? I believe it would help.”

“I’ll try,” Felix mumbles, voice barely carrying across the crackle of the fire. “After Gronder.”

“After Gronder,” Dedue echoes. “In the meantime, we will keep him alive.”

A reluctant smile slants across Felix’s face. “I’m putting my faith in you again, you know.”

It’s dark now; the sounds of the forest are almost grating. Just out of sight, Felix can hear twigs snapping underfoot, the promised return of Sylvain and Ingrid, both of them probably grinning like fools. 

Finally, Dedue smiles. “Strange, what faith can do.”

+

**30 th of the Great Tree Moon, Imperial Year 1185**

Because death is coming for us all, none among us can truly be called the victor or the defeated. 

This is not the dogma endorsed by the Church of Seiros – it’s a Faerghan soldier’s refrain. A reminder, a pledge to be no more bonded to the past than to the future; to dedicate yourself in each and every moment to your duty. Rodrigue impresses these words upon Felix in his serious, straightforward way. And even when Glenn dies, Rodrigue is firm; his soldier’s heart won’t sway. Glenn was not defeated, nor was he the victor. He lived, he did his duty. He was a true knight – and that was enough. That was _more_ than enough.

Is it enough, Felix wonders, for his father to be killed in the same manner that his firstborn son was? Laying down his life for royalty – a shield to the very last second?

Felix loses his brother, his father. He loses Dimitri, and he loses Dimitri, and he loses Dimitri, and he loses—

Felix manages, somehow, not to lose himself.

Rodrigue’s been using a spare room in the monastery, and Felix sets about cleaning it out, gathers his few belongings: battle plans, spell tomes, correspondence from Fraldarius. The troops are running low on grain, and the trade route their usual merchant uses is plagued by bandits – but upon further inspection, it’s revealed they are not bandits at all, but hungry townspeople from a war-ravaged village, in need of food for their families. What does the Duke want to do? What is the fairest course of action? What compromises must be made? These problems are now Felix’s to manage. He curls a hand in his father’s cloak. The brocade is so much more elaborate than he knew, the fabric heavier than he realized.

Anger doesn’t come. Sadness doesn’t come. A strange, unfamiliar feeling curls a mottled hand around Felix’s heart.

_Ah_. This is what defeat feels like.

+

**9 th of the Harpstring Moon, Imperial Year 1185**

They spend Annette’s birthday in town, and it must be a good sign that the homes left to ruin outside Garreg Mach are slowly re-populating, new faces dotting the streets that wind and expand like roots feeding a battered old tree, still clinging to life. Felix doesn’t care about birthdays but he cares about Annette, and so he’s there, clutching one tankard of beer the whole night. He allows himself one smile when Annette attempts to drag him to the battered, wooden dance floor of the tavern. She doesn’t succeed, but he likes that she tries.

The bar is still a lively heart beating when Felix leaves them for the still, dead cold of the cathedral. They’ve been clearing rubble for months; it has the look of a skeleton picked clean, now.

“You’re missing Annette’s birthday.”

It’s been a while since Felix saw that wry smile on Dimitri’s face. “So are you.”

Felix shrugs, leaning back against one of the cool pillars that have become so familiar to him. “I went for a while. Almost danced.”

Dimitri’s smile twitches wider. “Almost?”

“You couldn’t pay me.”

The ease of conversation feels wrong. Felix has never been the kind to obscure his words, to hide behind half-truths and pleasantries. Say what you mean or say nothing. But something about Dimitri always seems to knock all his rules by the wayside – or, maybe, it’s that something about Dimitri knocks all of Felix’s options into starker relief.

“I missed you,” Felix manages, at the same time that Dimitri says, “I’m sorry.”

“Save it, please,” Felix holds back an eye roll, hands fisted firm at his sides. “I don’t want your useless apologies or—or your grief. We can’t change the past—” _not anymore, at least_ , “—so I don’t want it. I just want—”

_You._ On the tip of his tongue. And he’s frozen again.

“My apologies… you’re right,” Dimitri lets out a humorless laugh. “They’re useless. But they are all I have, until I can make this right.”

“You can make it right _now_ ,” Felix’s face wrinkles. “I won’t—none of us can wait until some magical day when everything is made right and perfect. That will never come.”

“And I’m a fool for thinking so,” Dimitri finishes, letting that smile slant across his face again. “It is hard to let go of childish things.”

Childish things like stories of a beautiful future, ruling together side-by-side; childish things like an unvarnished belief that your brother will always come out of every skirmish unscathed; childish things like refusing to let go of your friend, even when he is gone to everyone but the ghosts in his head. Felix knows of childish things.

They’ve been drifting together – for years, across miles, and now inches. A step closer, cutting the distance in half, then again, then again. If each of them keeps moving a half at a time, all they’ll be left with is that insurmountable sliver between them.

Dimitri tucks a stray strand of hair behind Felix’s ear. “You used to be taller than me, you know.”

Just a hair. But Felix remembers Dimitri looking up at him, eyes crinkled shut around a laugh. “I could still grow,” Felix mumbles, flinching away.

“Yes, of course.”

Felix bites his tongue, looking down and away from Dimitri’s penetrating gaze. They’re a long way from normal – if they were ever there at all. “Be there next time.”

“Be there?” There’s that infuriating, tiny tilt of his head again. Felix wants to smack him. Felix wants to kiss him.

“The tavern,” Felix grits out. “Annette… makes us all go sometimes. If I can manage to go, so can you.” He manages a glance up at Dimitri, whose amusement seems to be growing by the second. “Our commander should be rousing the troops, and whatnot.”

“And whatnot,” Dimitri repeats. He looks unbearably fond. “Annette is hard to say no to, isn’t she?”

Felix tuts, turning to leave. It’s been long enough reining himself in. He should ask about Dimitri’s nightmares, about the shattered pieces of all those failed universes. But he’s so tired, and the noise from the tavern and that small bit of alcohol has left him with a headache, and Dimitri smells like pine and—

“Just come. I won’t ask again.”

“I will be there, next time,” Dimitri gives a curt bow, and a wry smile. He looks almost like the old Dimitri. “I can’t say no to you, Felix.”

(Felix is halfway out the door before he lets himself blush.)

+

_Dimitri?_

_Dimitri, are you in there?_

+

**5 th of the Blue Sea Moon, Imperial Year 1185**

Dimitri wakes up and feels – well, he feels fine, actually. Miracles do happen, after all.

The weeks after Gronder feel like an eternity of their own. Dimitri has had five years – more really, much longer, now – to dig his own grave, the hole deepening and darkening with each handful of dirt shoved aside with greedy, gauntlet-clawed hands. It’s a deceptively easy thing to strip yourself of your humanity. It’s a much harder thing to climb out of that burrowed grave, to put your mottled limbs back together into the approximate shape of a human. Dimitri’s been put back together all wrong – but he’s been put back together. And that’s half the battle.

Faerghans are well adapted to the cold and, with it, the madness that comes; months spent sheltered inside, ceilings groaning under the weight of snow piling up. Even in the harshest weather, you have to venture outside to feed the animals, check the horses’ feet for hoof freeze, melt icicles that threaten to fall and damage the barn. It’s easy to lose a little bit of your mind with your wings clipped.

Which is all to say – Dimitri goes to get breakfast at the dining hall, sits down at the same table he sat at five years ago now, eats a spoonful of too-hot porridge, and it all feels devastatingly normal.

“How’s it taste?” Annette leans over the table. Her own porridge has been sprinkled with an extra dosing of sugar, a small white pile on top of the oats. “Since last time—well, I don’t think you were, uh, you know,” she waves her hands, eyes going a bit hectic. “Anyway, I used _way_ too many spices last time so this time, no spices at all.”

“There’s gotta be a middle ground, Annie.” Sylvain’s voice is all in good humor, but he’s dumping an unholy amount of cinnamon into his bowl. “It’s a little bland.”

“Aw!” Annette pouts, falling back down to her seat. Dimitri tells her the porridge is excellent, but the damage is done. Sylvain ribs him, and Mercedes sets about soothing Annette down from the metaphorical ledge. There it is again – that devastating, miraculous normalcy.

But among his personal renaissance, Dimitri is still leading a war. 

Fort Merceus is their next target. Byleth is going to scout out routes, following reports of bandits in the area. It’s too much of a distraction to end up in territory overrun by them. Dimitri is quick to volunteer to join them for backup, and surely even two dozen bandits or more wouldn’t stand a chance against the two of them, so no one else should need—

“I’m going too.”

“Called it,” Sylvain interjects, leaning back in his chair as the rest of the room swivels their attention to Felix, sitting with his arms folded tight across his chest.

“You called nothing,” Ingrid mumbles, but Dimitri sees her less-than-surreptitiously slip a few coins under the table into Sylvain’s palm.

Dimitri looks helplessly over at Byleth. Being around Felix is… difficult, to say the least. It’s everything and nothing; it’s the way Felix’s mouth will sometimes click shut so loudly Dimitri can hear his teeth clack, like he’s holding something back; it’s the way that when that same mouth pouts, Dimitri wants nothing more than to crash his face against Felix’s, to bite his lip and taste blood. Navigating his steps around Felix, carefully choosing every word – it feels ten times more complicated than actual orchestrations of war, sometimes.

But Byleth doesn’t seem to see Dimitri’s saucer-wide eye. They just shrug. “Sure.”

This is how the one-person expedition becomes a two-person reconnaissance mission becomes a three-person scouting mission. It’s fine. Dimitri keeps his bearings about him, and it becomes easier the deeper they get into enemy territory, as calm focus becomes a matter of survival.

It all starts to go downhill when they stop to make camp for the night. Byleth goes to unpack the supplies and pauses, letting out an audible _oh._

“What is it?” Dimitri fears the worst. They’ve lost their map, or forgotten extra concoctions, or an animal’s gotten into their pack and eaten all their food, or—

“We only brought one tent.”

Ah. Of course. 

They had packed extra provisions when Felix decided to tag along, and an extra bedroll, but no actual tent for him to sleep in. They tent they do have is a small, utilitarian thing. A world’s difference from the tents Lambert and Rodrigue used to pitch for them as children during hunting trips, veritable labyrinths of tiny, screened-in rooms where Dimitri and Felix would play hide-and-seek.

Felix catches Dimitri smiling at the memory, and crosses his arms, tapping his foot against the dirt floor of the forest. “You two were—you were going to share?”

“I prefer to sleep outside.” Byleth says. “Besides, I require little sleep. It’s better for me to stay up and keep watch.” _Weirdo_ , Dimitri imagines Felix saying. He always called Byleth strange, even back during their academy days. He respected their skill, to be sure, and eventually warmed up to them. But he never got over all their little oddities.

“Fine,” Felix clamps his jaw shut. “I’ll sleep outside too. Could probably use the extra set of eyes.”

“Felix, no, I will be the one to—”

“Shut up, we’re not _all_ sleeping outside,” Felix huffs. “You’re the _king_ , you sleep in the tent.”

Dimitri waves his hands, looking helplessly at Byleth once again. And, as usual, they have the perfect way of slicing through their nonsense, easy as their blade slices through their enemies. How many times had they broken up their teenage bickering, after all, with just a curt word and those eerie eyes shooting them knowing looks?

They resume unpacking their gear, and tosses the bedrolls to Dimitri; he catches them, one in each hand. “Sleep in the tent. Both of you. It will be easier for me to cast a shielding spell around a small area.”

“But—”

There’s that piercing look again. How nostalgic. “You’ll survive.”

Survive, perhaps. But whether Dimitri’s sanity will live through the experience – he’s not yet sure.

Byleth catches fish from a nearby river – they were always talented at that – and they cook dinner over a small fire in silence, eat in silence, and prepare for rest in silence. It feels familiar, somehow. Dimitri’s always found the quiet between himself and the Professor comforting, easy. Between him and Felix is another story entirely.

The last time he was this close to Felix was… after Rodrigue’s death. It was Annette’s birthday, and Felix had looked so gutted and conflicted, looking up at Dimitri with red-rimmed eyes.

Dimitri wonders if Felix even realized he was crying, back then.

But since then, Felix has kept such a careful space between them, as if he were the other leg of a compass, always that same, precise distance from Dimitri at all times. Dimitri slowly inches across that distance through the years, small moments like the ball during their time as students. One of the rare times when Felix let his hair down, and Dimitri had complimented him, pinching a strand of hair between gloved hands; Felix had swatted him away in short order, face going pink. It was always like this with them – all carefully choreographed interactions. 

“Felix,” Dimitri clears his throat. “Are you—you don’t have to sleep in your armor.”

Felix scoffs, laying his head on the stuffed-up cape serving as his pillow, face turned away. “Better to be prepared.” 

Dimitri sighs. His own armor is too unwieldy, so he sheds it in silence, left in just a loose shirt and pants.

There’s a time in between – Dimitri remembers as his head hits the bedroll. Between the dance, between the feeling of Felix’s hair slipping through his fingers and Rodrigue’s body going limp in his arms. A time from the haze of his mind, those early days when the ghosts digging their fingers in the soft spots of his brain.

The day of his escape, blood-soaked and breathless. Standing face-to-face.

Felix was there… wasn’t he?

“Felix,” Dimitri repeats, turning toward his friend. His oldest friend. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Ask in the morning.” Felix is curling in on himself, and it’s such close quarters that Dimitri can feel every small movement of his body, can feel the brush of his back against his front – just a small point of contact that becomes Dimitri’s entire world.

He tries to sleep, but sleep is a luxury, even as the ghosts quiet their pleas. And they seem to be particularly quiet tonight. Instead, Dimitri is haunted by every small noise and movement of the man next to him, every tiny sigh that slips from his lips. Felix twitches in his sleep sometimes, almost like the cats that they’d find at the monastery, ears flicking in their sleep. But instead of ears, it’s Felix’s hands, clutching the blanket, fingers curling and uncurling, worrying the fabric between them.

Dimitri doesn’t even think. He slides his hand under Felix’s, lacing their fingers together.

Felix’s eyes snap open, and he recoils like he’s been scaled. “What are you doing?”

“I was—” Dimitri startles, but his hand remains firm, squeezing Felix’s fingers. “You were having a nightmare. I was only trying to help.”

Felix’s bottom lips wobbles, so slightly Dimitri almost doesn’t notice it. “I wasn’t.”

He could leave it at that, let it be. It would be the easy thing to do, to continue orbiting Felix like some far-away star. In the half-darkness of midnight, Felix looks so small and unsure, so unlike himself in the sunlight. There’s a sliver of light peeking in through the flap of the tent, painting a milk white stripe across Felix’s chest, some kind of mortal wound.

Dimitri remembers something.

“I had—I _have_ nightmares too,” he says, and if to ward off Felix’s incoming scoff, adds, “About you.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes you’re—you die, mostly,” Dimitri’s voice goes soft, and he laughs humorlessly. “But mostly it’s me, doing the dying. It feels so real it almost hurts. But each time is little different, we’re in Fhirdiad, or we’re in battle, or we’re in an old hunting cabin—"

He hears Felix’s breath catch in his throat.

“Do you—”

“No,” Felix stammers quickly, and Dimitri can practically hear the way his teeth are probably grinding. “It’s nothing.”

Dimitri lets the tent lapse into silence. Pushing Felix too far will only push him away. It’s just—

They really had felt real, the dreams. Like lost memories

Felix’s voice drifts through the quiet. “You don’t have to wear your eyepatch.”

“My—” Dimitri’s hand shoots to his eye. _Oh_. He hadn’t even realized he was still wearing it. “It’s like a part of me now, strangely enough. Besides, my scar is…”

He trails off. His eye – how had he lost it again? The memory is so hazy, painted over and obscured. Had it been Cornelia? Had _he_ dug his own eye out in a fit of rage? Was it an accident?

“Your scar is fine,” Felix grumbles, hand reaching for Dimitri’s face, and Dimitri doesn’t even have time to flinch before Felix is pinching the tie and tugging it free, letting the black scrap of fabric fall to the tent floor between them. “See?”

“Well…” Dimitri’s mouth quirks up. “I _can’t_ see out of it, is the thing.”

Felix’s jaw clicks shut – but Dimitri catches him smiling all the same. “Good night.”

“Good night, Felix. And thank you.”

He doesn’t expect a response. But, as Felix shuffles himself back into a comfortable position – this time facing Dimitri – he exhales and says, in his way, “Save your thanks for when we make it out of this war alive.”

+

**6 th of the Blue Sea Moon, Imperial Year 1185**

Dimitri was always the morning person out of all the Blue Lions – but this time, Felix is the one who wakes first, and Dimitri is still in that half-floating state between dreams and reality when he feels Felix leave the tent.

(He swears he feels someone run a hand across his temple, brush the hair off his face. But that can’t be right, that couldn’t be Felix.)

There’s a small fire burning, not large enough to produce any smoke that would be visible above the tree canopy, and some grilled fish left out for Dimitri. He puts his armor on and, still feeling strangely naked, ducks back into the tent to find his eyepatch, abandoned among the blankets.

Felix and Byleth are huddled together by the horses, which is not itself an unusual sight. The two of them spend more and more time together, particularly after Rodrigue’s death. There are reinforcements and supplies to coordinate, battle plans to pour over. Felix usually eschews company, but he respects Byleth, and seeks their advice as he starts to take over his father’s duty. He probably still finds them odd, but maybe it’s that peculiarity that makes Byleth such good company to Felix.

But this morning they look – strange. Felix has that furrowed line between his brows, the kind he only gets when he’s truly frustrated, and there’s a dent in his cheek like he’s biting it, holding himself back as Byleth says something. They’re always so calm, so direct, but now Dimitri sees them gesturing to their head, and though he can’t hear them, he can feel the hesitation in their voice, the way they keep starting and stopping. Trying to explain something that can’t be explained.

He feels guilty, watching them like this, but Dimitri can’t bring himself to look away. A strange feeling worms its way into his chest when Byleth grabs Felix’s shoulder, then runs their hand up and down his arm. They’re saying something, and it must be a whisper from the way they lean in, forehead almost touching Felix’s and—

_Oh_. Oh, Dimitri does not like that at all.

No, he should know better than to let jealousy (is he jealous?) ruin his happiness (is he happy?) at the sight of two dear friends and advisors becoming closer (are they?) in the midst of wartime. Everyone deserves someone to go home to, someone to protect them, someone to—

“Dimitri,” Felix sits down gracelessly next to the fire, grimacing as he stretches out a crick in his neck. “Are you going to eat or what?”

“I, um, yes!” Dimitri snatches the last grilled fish, biting into it with a bit too much enthusiasm.

Felix snorts, prodding the fire with a stick. “You need your strength, so eat up.”

Felix looks almost… fond, Dimitri might call it, gently scolding Dimitri like this. There’s that feeling in the pit of his chest again, squeezing at him.

It’s that stubborn streak of recklessness that Dimitri hasn’t managed to tamp out that causes him to open his mouth and, in a conspiratorial tone, say, “Felix, I think I realized why you volunteered to come on this mission.”

“Did you, boar?” Felix deadpans, not looking over, eyes fixed firmly on the flames, the way the logs crackle and shatter. Like if he looks over at Dimitri he’ll fall apart like one of those logs, ashy and delicate.

“Yes, I think.” Dimitri clears his throat, like he’s about to start a grand oration in front of a crowd of his subjects. And what he says is, “You have feelings for Professor Byleth.”

And _that_ gets Felix’s attention. His head whips around so fast his ponytail bobs, and he gives Dimitri a bewildered look. “I have _what_ now?”

“I’m sorry Felix,” Dimitri says, grave. “I did not mean to expose your secret. You have my assurances that I will keep it to myself. But,” and this part comes out a bit rougher, but Dimitri forces out, “please know you can talk to me about, ah… anything. If I can be of help at all…”

He trails off, and Felix’s jaw clicks shut as he turns away, mumbling something to himself that Dimitri doesn’t catch. Probably _fucking idiot_ or _useless_ or one of the other colorful monikers Felix uses to describe anyone deigning to think of romance during a war. But it’s comfortable, isn’t it? To have someone to warm your bed after days spent drenching your hands with the blood of men and women who were once your comrades, your friends? To comfort you with a cool hand to a heated brow? It’s not just Sylvain and Ingrid – pairs start sprouting around the monastery, throughout the troop ranks.

Still, Dimitri goes to bed and is comforted only by the fact that, in some of his dreams, Felix makes it out alive.

“Never mind me, Felix,” Dimitri says as Felix starts putting out the fire, gets up to get his things packed. “That was inappropriate to bring up. I am only saying I would be very happy for you both if—”

“Boar,” Felix says, firm and clear. He makes a movement like he’s going to clap Dimitri on the shoulder, but instead he lets his fingers trail, featherlight, across his breastplate. Just drumming them there softly, like he’s considering something. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

And he’s gone, cape billowing behind him as he heads toward the horses.

And then Felix dies, and Dimitri never does get the chance to ask what he meant.

+

It’s all an accident, a small twist of fate or design. Or perhaps fate has nothing to do with it – it’s just familiarity, or habit, or the way Dimitri always seems to be looking for a flash of silver hair around every corner. Edelgard haunts him because he wants her dead; then, she haunts him because he wants her alive, wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until the Emperor fades away and he can see that little girl again, the one he gifted that dagger to so long ago.

Dimitri feels like he sees Edelgard everywhere. And then he finally, really, truly does.

“Shh,” Byleth’s hand whips out to tug Dimitri down by the shoulder the second they catch glimpse of that Emperor’s crown glinting gold in the sunlight. Felix is already crouched in the bushes a few feet down, taking a better vantage point to mount an attack.

This can’t be real. This can’t be how they find her. Edelgard should be holed up in Enbarr, not traipsing around outer reaches of Imperial territory.

An advisor following behind her – Hubert, Dimitri realizes – seems to agree. “Your Majesty, we have been out in the open too long. We should return to camp at once.”

“Shush, Hubert,” Edelgard waves him off, but he shoulders are tight. He steps a bit closer to her, their arms brushing, and she seems to calm just a bit.

She’s accompanied only by a few men besides Hubert. Mages, by the look of it, but they’re dressed strangely, not in Imperial regalia like Dimitri would expect. And it looks less like they’re there to protect and more like they’re leading a lamb to slaughter.

But Edelgard would never let herself be fooled so easily. Surely.

“He was supposed to be here by now,” Hubert snaps, and the mages jump back a bit at the bite of his tone.

“Hubert,” Edelgard hums. “Have some patience.”

“Dimitri,” Byleth whispers, so low it might as well just be an animal slithering through the trees. They’re looking back and forth between Dimitri and Felix. Good thing Felix can read lips. “If we want to do anything, it has to be now.”

“Before whomever they’re talking about shows up,” Dimitri finishes.

He sees Felix nod, and Byleth nods in return. Three against five – not exactly even odds. But, taken another way, it’s three Hero’s Relics against one. They have the element of surprise, as well. And Byleth is the living embodiment of the Goddess herself, so, shouldn’t that count for something?

Dimitri wishes he made those calculations more carefully. Instead, he nods as well, and it’s a split second before the three of them are vaulting into the small clearing. Byleth takes out one mage with ease, and Dimitri takes out another, their bodies crumpling under the eerie relics’ glow. Felix is the quickest among them, making a beeline for Hubert – but their former classmate is a more formidable enemy. He parries Felix’s attack with a burst of miasma, and they both go tumbling, leaving Edelgard alone.

“Dimitri!” Byleth shouts, whipping their bow out to notch a shot that goes whizzing past Dimitri’s ear and lodges itself in the chest of the last mage. He stumbles to the ground, hand still outstretched and crackling with dark magic. Dimitri sneers, dealing the finishing blow.

“My teacher,” Edelgard breathes out, and the air around her seems electric as she grips her axe. Even alone, she is the most fearsome of them all, eyes flashing wildly. “I had my suspicions this was a trap. And still, I am surprised to see you.”

“No trap,” Byleth mumbles. Their stance is firm, even as their eyebrows furrow, eyes going hazy with nostalgia. “But we are ending this.”

The clash of Amyr and the Sword of the Creator is enough to send Dimitri staggering back in its shockwave, ground roiling like the world around them has suddenly lost cohesion. He spins Areadbhar in his hand, using the momentum to hit the side of Amyr as it comes crashing down, and Edelgard roars as Byleth dodges out of its wake. The sound of the Sword of the Creator unhinging is a sharp rasp, and Byleth’s arm whips back, the sword following in a wave. Just one strike, one perfect strike and—

This is it. This could be it.

The adrenaline bubbling in Dimitri’s chest goes flat the second he hears Felix cry out.

It’s nearly impossible to see through the haze of magic and dust and debris, but Dimitri catches the yellow shot of lightning, before a Levin sword goes flying to the side, lodging in the stump of an old, rotted tree. Hubert’s laugh, cackling above the fray of the fight, cuts off with a gurgle. It’s suddenly deathly quiet on that side of the clearing.

“Fe—Felix!” Dimitri has never moved so quickly, leaving Byleth alone with Edelgard, squinting through the settling dust. He stumbles over something, looking down to find Hubert’s pallid face, eyes open in unseeing horror. A diagonal stripe from his left shoulder down to his right hip is completely charred black, mottled and peeling.

A parting shot.

“Felix, please!” Dimitri falls to his knees, almost crawling now, reaching across damp ground for Felix. “Say something, _Felix!”_

“F-Fuck, Dimitri—” There’s a cough, and the lingering cloud of magic is so thick Dimitri can swipe a hand through it, like pushing a curtain aside. Felix is propped up against a tree, holding his stomach with both hands. “S-So noisy.”

“Felix,” Dimitri folds his hands over Felix’s, and he can see the blood pouring from his wound, gone gray from poison, can feel the unsettling squirm of his guts as they hold them in. “Felix, no.”

He’s crying. Pathetic – a future king, a commander – crying on the battlefield. As if this wasn’t foretold, as if casualties aren’t a given. But this is _Felix_ – this is different. This feels like Dimitri’s world sliding away beneath his feet.

“Dima…” Felix’s final breath rattles in his chest, and a small trickle of blood falls from the corner of his mouth. This isn’t how this was supposed to go, this isn’t it at all.

He looks so small like this. And now, it is all so devastatingly quiet.

“Dimitri!” Byleth’s head comes into view as the dust settles. She’s grimacing, holding the grip of her sword with both hands. The snake-like Sword of the Creator is wrapped around Edelgard’s torso, pinning her arms to her side, and the Emperor looks like she’s unconscious, blood dripping down the side of her head. “I need you!”

“Pro—Byleth, I—” Dimitri can’t leave him. Not now. Not ever.

“I…” Byleth’s eyes go soft as they finally see Felix, his body limp against the tree, Dimitri’s hands still pressed fruitlessly against his stomach. “Dimitri, he—”

“Save him,” Dimitri pleads, voice cracking. “Please, Professor.” _I can’t do this without him._

“I can,” Byleth’s voice is shaking, just so, and a small weariness crosses their face. Like they’ve done this all before. “But I can’t do both.” They gesture to Edelgard, slumped over in the clutches of the Sword of the Creator. The most prized prisoner of war – the personification of the war itself. “We can capture Edelgard or we can save Felix.”

When Dimitri doesn’t respond, Byleth adds, “You have to choose.”

What is the life of one man, in the face of hundreds or thousands lost in a protracted war? This is logical, to let Felix die, to capture Edelgard and end this war once and for all. That is the logic Edelgard herself would use, Dimitri knows – and he can almost feel her watching over his shoulder, like an old friend. _Sacrifices must be made if you want to lead, Dimitri,_ he imagines her saying. _You simply do not have the courage to make those difficult choices._

Maybe not. But Felix does – he always has. And so, what would it mean to rule without Felix by his side, without his counsel, his courage?

What was this war all for, what was some semblance of _peace_ for, if Felix isn’t there to see it?

“Save him.” Quiet at first, then louder – surer. “Save him. I don’t care what it costs.”

Byleth looks almost proud. Their grip slips from the sword, and the restraints around Edelgard fall away. “For what it’s worth,” they say, watching Edelgard blink awake with a twinge of sadness. “I would have chosen the same.”

And the world goes black.

+

**6wk ri wkh Eoxh Vhd Prrq, Lpshuldo Bhdu 1185**

“Dima?”

Felix was always such a crybaby. Big tears like translucent pearls, large enough to decorate the most ostentatious royal regalia, and Dimitri would decorate entire palaces with those strings of pearls and gems because as much as he loathes to make Felix cry, he loves to watch. All those emotions plain as rivers on his face, a nostalgic watercolor tableau that Dimitri can’t look away from. Chalk it up to another thing Dimitri will hold inside his chest, tamp down like dirt on his grave.

Felix looks young, a tiny speck of blue and teal against crisp white. Snow? It doesn’t sparkle like the snow in Faerghus, the pure white blanket they would wake up to as soon as the weather turned. It doesn’t take much.

“Dima?” The voice echoes, tinny in Dimitri’s ears. “Are you there? L'p vfduhg, fdq brx vhh ph? Zkhuh duh brx?”

“I’m—” Dimitri squints against the blinding emptiness. And then, Felix is there. Young and pouting, with those fur-lined boots he refused to get rid of until the soles wore through. “I’m here! Where—are you lost?”

“Glpd!” The voice is all wrong, garbled and metallic, just an echo of that childish chirp. “L'yh ehhq khuh vr orqj, L wkrxjkw brx forgot about me.”

A worry line grows between Dimitri’s eyebrows. “I could—Felix, I could never forget about you.”

“I know, but!” the voice breaks, and Felix runs for Dimitri, launching at him and hugging his knees with an iron grip. Dimitri wobbles in place, steadying himself with a large hand on top of Felix’s head. This was when his hair was still so long, before he had Glenn shorn it all off in a huff. “But I didn’t see you, and I was worried!”

“How long were you here?” Dimitri crouches down, holding Felix’s shoulders. They’re so tiny and breakable – were they ever really this small? “For that matter, where _is_ here?”

Felix’s face crumples in confusion. “We’re in Fraldarius. It’s been forever since you visited.”

“I’m—” Dimitri holds his breath as Felix starts to cry, those massive tears falling against the blank space between them, tiny pools of pink and purple blooming, cooling to teal and blue. He doesn’t seem to realize he’s crying, that same puzzled look.

“I’m sorry Felix,” Dimitri says finally. He doesn’t have to understand. “I won’t stay away so long next time.”

“Just stay!” Felix chirps, face sparkling. The tear drops cast a constellation across his cheeks. “Just stay, and then I won’t miss you!”

_I missed you._

Dimitri closes his eye, drops his hands from Felix’s shoulders. “I missed you too. I never said but—” his mouth tastes like metal, like blood, “Every day I was out there, I was thinking of you. Even when I didn’t realize I was, even when I thought it was a ghost or a nightmare or—”

Something warm touches Dimitri’s cheek, and his eye startles open. It’s Felix – _his_ Felix, the Felix he watched die, the Felix who saved him, the Felix who kissed him once upon a time.

“You’re a sap,” he says, and the fondness is palpable. Dimitri can taste it in the air, something light and sweet, with just a tinge of spice; that small aftertaste. He holds Felix’s hand against his cheek, runs a thumb across his knuckles.

“For as long as you live,” he breathes.

“Then—”

_Wake up._

_Wake up, Dimitri._

“—you hear me, Dimitri. Dimitri!”

Byleth is peering over at him, their eyes wide and searching. “Dimitri,” they repeat, and if he hadn’t known them for so long, he wouldn’t be able to spot the recognition in their eyes, the subtle way they nod as they ask, “Which way should we go?”

They’re back near the campsite, preparing to mount their horses, the dead fire still smoldering. Dimitri remembers now – to the left is Edelgard, the clearing where they will find the Emperor near-defenseless. The end of the war, if they so choose.

To the right is – well, Dimitri doesn’t know. But Felix is there, at his right side as always.

He has never been known as a fearful man – no Faerghan truly is. There is life, there is death, and at some point, you will fall into these categories, whether you want to or not. But Dimitri, for five years, straddles that line. He’s alive, moving, breathing, eating. But he feels dead, his soul decayed and rotted. He stands with both feet in the grave and his head barely above ground before his friends drag him out, kicking and screaming and spitting. And so, Dimitri does not fear death. He has been there, on its precipice. Many, many times, he now realizes. 

He fears losing Felix. Fears his own fear, his own weakness, his own feelings. Love is a terrifying thing.

“Well?” Felix catches Dimitri’s eye, foot tapping impatiently. “Where to?”

Dimitri swallows his fears and says, “Right.”

+

**13 th of the Pegasus Moon, Imperial Year 1186**

Everyone is asking for His Majesty. And Dimitri is nowhere to be found.

“I think Felix is grumpy, since he doesn’t have Dimitri to himself anymore,” Annette giggles out, hiccupping. The champagne could be hitting her, or it could just be the atmosphere of the castle itself – the glitter and the gowns and the chandeliers all lit for the first time in what may be years. There’s still rubble to clear, but the ballroom makes for a more-than-suitable celebration.

“What?” Felix snatches the champagne flute from Annette, downing it himself as he scans the crowd for what could be the millionth time. “What does that even mean?”

“Felix!!” Annette drags out his name into at least ten syllables. “You’re so mean, get me a new drink!”

Sylvain appears, as always, at the exact right and wrong moment, swooping in to hand Annette a fresh glass. “A drink for the lady. What’s this I hear about Felix being grumpy?”

“I’m not _grumpy_ ,” Felix says, grumpily.

“Aw, c’mon,” Sylvain slings an arm around Felix’s shoulders. “We won! We’re alive! Dimitri is going to be the _king_ , you could at least crack a smile!”

“I can’t find our future _king,_ is the thing.” Felix ducks out from under Sylvain’s arm with a practiced squirm.

“Looking for some,” Sylvain leans in, eyebrows dancing, “ _alone_ time with His Majesty?”

It’s not polite to smack your friend. Especially a friend who has saved your skin multiple times. And especially not in the middle of a crowded ballroom among the most important group of people in all of Fodlan and beyond. Felix reminds himself of this, and so Sylvain remains un-smacked.

“He’s wanted for…” Felix pulls a face. “Schmoozing.”

“Schmoozing,” Annette repeats, rolling the word around in her mouth like a delectable candy. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

No one does, but Gilbert insists and even Byleth is rounded up from the small alcove on the balcony where they’ve managed to hide out. The war of weapons is over, and now the weapons of words begins – ambassadors and dignitaries and reticent nobles must all be wooed. It takes a special kind of person to listen to the Dagdan ambassador drone on about the different breeds of fruit flies to watch out for without falling asleep standing up.

Actually— “Sylvain, you’re good at talking. Go stall while I track Dimitri down.”

“Felix,” Sylvain presses a hand to his chest. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Felix valiantly resists an eye roll. “Bring Ingrid with you. It will comfort them to see that the infamous Gautier heir is engaged.”

“I’m—” Sylvain lets out a short, bewildered chuckle, pausing with his glass half-lifted to his lips. “I’m what, now?”

“Oh!” Annette claps her hands together, eyes going damp. “She finally did it? Oh, Sylvain, congratulations!!”

_Fuck._ Felix wasn’t supposed to say that.

“Um, just—” Felix almost wants to laugh, because Ingrid is going to be _so_ mad. She had been so embarrassed telling Felix her plans, asking for his help, dragging him along to the market to pose as her fiancé so the merchants wouldn’t make strange remarks about a woman buying an engagement ring on her own. (They did have questions, however, about Ingrid buying a Sylvain-sized ring that decidedly did _not_ fit Felix’s more slender fingers.)

_I think for a while I forgot how to be happy,_ she tells Felix over dinner at their favorite tavern – her treat. _I was so focused on figuring out what was right. I lost so much time. I want to be happy again._

“Felix!” Sylvain hisses, tugging on Felix’s cape with new urgency. “Tell me what the _hell_ —”

“Okay,” Felix cuts his losses and unbuttons his cape, letting it fall into Sylvain’s hands as he makes a quick escape. “Good luck with that!”

Felix is halfway down the corridor when he hears Sylvain yelp out a _oh, hi Ingrid!_ at an embarrassing pitch. He’ll be fine, Felix reasons, but he lets himself laugh anyway, lets it echo around the ancient stone as he darts down the hall, through the maze of stairs and stones laid by men who died before Felix was even a thought of a thought in his parents’ minds. One day, he will be one of those men, someone so far-away and ancient that even students of history will forget his name. Something about that is thrilling.

_I forgot how to be happy. I want to be happy again._

It’s instinct and muscle memory that carries Felix down to the courtyard, back through the stables, down a rickety set of stairs, into a familiar dry storage room that has been used only for illegal dice games and ill-advised servant dalliances.

And, once upon a time, for rescue missions.

Dimitri is standing among the shelves, fingers tracing shapes in the thick layers of dust. “You found me.”

“Always do.”

The war ends in the same way so many things do – unceremoniously. It’s difficult to celebrate, not when the cost has been so high, not when comrades are still in the infirmary in serious condition. Not when Dimitri keeps looking at his hand – the hand he had extended to Edelgard – with that crushing look on his face.

Not when there is so much work left to do.

Months pass, and Felix manages to dance around his feelings, bury them under mountains of paperwork and meetings and – surprise of all surprises – more paperwork.

Repetition breeds excellence. But Felix never gets any better at refusing his feelings.

He has one question left, before he bares his throat, lets Dimitri see him vulnerable and open. “Why did you save me?”

“I—” Dimitri stutters, hands curling and uncurling. He looks so handsome in his finery, almost enough to distract Felix from what he came here to do. “It was a decision made in a moment of weakness. And still,” he looks up, catching Felix’s eyes. “I would make the same decision now.”

“But _why_?” Felix’s voice is almost a whine, and he steps further into the room, just an arm’s length from Dimitri. “You could have ended the war you could have saved—everyone! Why me?”

The memory itself comes back to Felix in waves. The feeling of damp grass under his boots, the leather of his Levin sword’s grip in his palm. The slick rush of blood when Hubert’s magic lands true. Dimitri, eyes bleary and wet, pleading with him. And Felix doesn’t have to wonder what happened. He doesn’t have to wonder if Dimitri’s memories have also returned, all those days repeated like some horrible, far-away nightmare.

“I think, for the same reason you saved me, all those times,” Dimitri says, reaching out to tilt Felix’s chin up with two fingers. “I love you. And the thought of a world without you is too much to bear.”

“You…” Felix’s voice lowers to a warning, his lip wobbling traitorously. One hand reaches between them, and he steadies himself against Dimitri’s chest, fingers curling in the ornate blue silk. “You are making a lot of presumptions.”

“Perhaps,” Dimitri smiles. “I’ve lost so much time already. I have no desire to hide any longer.”

_I lost so much time. I want to be happy again._

“Ingrid’s going to propose to Sylvain,” Felix says, in a rush, eyes suddenly darting to the side, looking anywhere but at Dimitri, that painful, earnest expression.

“Oh?”

“Yes. And, well—” This is horrible. Is this what love is, constantly shedding your skin, peeling your comfortable layers back and hoping the other person will do the same? “Well, it will be a big affair. The Margrave will make sure of that.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And it would be a shame for the King to show up—alone.”

“Felix,” Dimitri sounds a second away from _laughing_ at him, the absolute _bastard_. “I would be honored to accompany you.”

“No—” Felix starts, face going pinched and pink. “I mean—yes, that would be great but— _fuck_ , this is hard.” He stomps a foot against the wooden floor, hard enough that the rickety shelves shake. “I’m saying I love you too, okay?”

“Okay,” Dimitri repeats, and his face is red as Felix’s must be as he tips his chin up further, another hand snaking around his waist, holding him firm. And it’s easy as anything to lean up and let the future king kiss him, something slow and gentle and sweet.

“Not bad,” Felix smiles, the shape of his lips curving against Dimitri’s. “Your Majesty.”

Dimitri chuckles, warm breath ghosting Felix’s lips, and he presses another kiss to the corner of his mouth; the “Not yet.”

“It’s the only time I’m calling you that. Savor it.”

“Oh, I am,” Dimitri snakes both arms around Felix’s middle, holding him close against his chest. “But, what shall you call me next, I wonder?”

Felix rolls his eyes. “Dimitri, probably.”

“Not, hm…” Dimitri pauses, a conspiratorial look on his face. “Dearest, maybe? Or darling, or sweetheart, or—”

“Sh-Shut up. Immediately,” Felix grumbles, burrowing his face in Dimitri’s chest. And _oh_ , this feels good. This feels right, even with a blush curling up Felix’s body, and his ears going red as tomatoes. “No pet names.”

Dimitri leans down, lets his lips ghost along Felix’s hairline. “Not even… my beloved?”

“… Whatever. Fine.”

“Hm?” Felix can _feel_ Dimitri perk up against him, and his face is probably pink too. “May I call you that? Beloved?”

“I said—” Felix makes a noise in the back of his throat. _Goddess_ , will this always be what it’s like, loving Dimitri? What an embarrassing enterprise. He wants to do it for the rest of his life. “I said, fine.”

“Good,” Dimitri’s please smile is obvious in his voice. “My Felix. My beloved.”

They will have to return to the party eventually. Even Sylvain can only tolerate the Dagdan ambassador for so long – and besides, Felix has some apologizing to do to Ingrid. They have alliances to build, centuries of oppression to undo, governments to transform. And even between them – years of resentment to unpack, memories and echoes of lives past that will haunt them, possibly forever.

They have a long night ahead of them, a long _life_ ahead of them. 

Dimitri squeezes Felix tighter. And it doesn’t feel so daunting, after all.

+

**15 th of the Wyvern Moon, Imperial Year 1195**

Felix wakes up hungover.

It’s the spiced wine that does him in. A present from Claude, bastard that he is, and Felix _really_ isn’t as young as he used to be, stumbling out of bed with a hand clutched to his forehead. It would have been nice to wake up to something other than a blank spot on the sheets next to him, but Felix has long past accepted his lot in life. 

And waking up alone isn’t so bad. This way, at least, he can wash his mouth in peace, brush the tangles out of his hair, retie his high pony tail, smooth back all the stray hairs until he looks semi-presentable. The bags under his eyes are omnipresent these days

Five years had felt like forever. Ten more feels like—

“Dimitri. What the hell?”

“Oh!” Dimitri perks up the second he hears the aging hinges of the cabin door open, and Felix steps out, boots crunching in the thin layer of snow. “You’re up.”

“Evidently,” Felix grumbles. “What happened to sleeping in?”

Dimitri winces, “Apologies, I was—”

“Up with the sun, I know,” Felix wipes a hand down his face, pulling his cloak – well, it’s actually _Dimitri’s_ cloak – tighter around his shoulders. He pads over to where Dimitri is standing, tanning the hide of a deer he probably caught this morning and is probably already roasting over the fire, if the smell of meat is anything to go by.

Felix leans just so into Dimitri’s side, and tips his face up toward his husband.

“Good morning, beloved,” Dimitri says, dropping a kiss to the corner of Felix’s temple. And the way his eyes go soft and dreamy will never get old to Felix, not until the day he dies and probably not even then.

_(What do I look like when I look at you?_ Felix had asked Dimitri once. Because Dimitri looks at Felix like he’s hung the moon and all the stars.

_You look at me like you see the man I’m meant to be,_ Dimitri answers.)

They have a few days alone, the first in many months, and it’s Dimitri who suggests the cabin. It’s not difficult to find, not with the help of Ingrid flying overhead, and when they step over the threshold, it’s untouched – just a fragment of a memory from another lifetime left lingering in the cobwebbed corners. And still, it feels like home. It feels like peace.

“Will you make dinner tonight?” Dimitri asks, reaching around to squeeze Felix’s side, pull him in that small bit closer. “The fish stew?”

“Ew,” Felix laughs under his breath. “You are the _only_ one who likes it.”

“Because when you cook, I can almost taste it!”

“You’re a horrible liar,” Felix tips up to kiss the underside of Dimitri’s jaw, the stubble of his beard tickling his lips. “The stew will be your punishment.”

Dimitri nods, grave. “I accept.”

Five years feels like a lifetime. Ten more feels like nothing. Ten years feels like a day, a minute, a second. For so long, Felix counted the days away from Dimitri. By his side, he stops counting, stops taking the stubborn edge of his blade against every problem, the fate he rails against with clenched fists. Felix stops fighting, and bliss finds him.

“Will you come back to bed first?”

“Of course,” Dimitri smiles, slow and soft. “I did promise.”

Felix will head back to bed, will burrow under the covers, maybe fall asleep again. If he’s accused of getting soft as he ages, so be it. There are only so many days they can do this, hiding away from peering eyes and drinking until they’re giggling and giddy, matching rings glinting gold in the lamp light.

And it won’t be long until Dimitri joins him, face red and ruddy from the cold outside. Felix will complain, but he’s always liked using his hands to warm Dimitri’s face, holding him tight between his palms, the most important man in Fodlan – all Felix’s for the taking.

It becomes enough to just sleep side-by-side like this, breath rising and falling in tandem. For years, Felix had always waited for Dimitri to fall asleep first. A lingering fear, maybe, that the second he closed his eyes that same day would start again, all the years behind him erased in a second. But Dimitri holds him tight, warm as anything, and sleep comes easy. 

Let the world move on without them.


End file.
